THE BRAVE ONE

Jodie Foster's movie, "The Brave One", came out on DVD this week. The tagline is: How many wrongs to make it right? My DH, who always enjoys seeing the bad guy get what he deserves, ran right out to buy it! The storyline goes like this: Foster's character, Erica, is a talk show host who is about to be married. Her fiancee is played by Naveen Andrews, of Lost fame. One night as they stroll through the park, they are brutally attacked, and her fiancee is killed. Erica is left alone to recover from the horrific experience she survived. Surprising herself, she proceeds to hand out "justice" as she sees it unfold on the streets. But she doesn't start out with that agenda; her fear causes her to react, and then, well, it just becomes habit. Terence Howard plays the cop who's investigating these "serial" crimes, and in the course of the story, they become friends.

Throughout the movie, it's obvious she wants to get caught. And you get the feeling that the cop (Howard), is a good cop, and that even though he cares about her, he cares more about doing the right thing. You know that eventually, he'll have to make a difficult choice - once he finds out Erica's little secret.

The funny thing is that this movie made me think of another movie I had just seen - "Mad Money". Which sounds insane, but in that movie, Diane Keaton says, "The truth is we’re all capable of anything. We don’t realize it. But it’s true". In "The Brave One", Foster's character says, "Inside us is a stranger". These statements are true. Each one of us is capable of anything, given the right situation. We don't know how we'd react in situations like these - a brutal random attack, or in the case of "Mad Money", if we're in a situation where we're desperate for money. Do these situations change us, or do they bring out what is already inside? I guess that's what Foster's character contemplates when she says that we have a stranger inside of us.

The movie was very suspenseful - along the lines of "Panic Room" & "Flight Plan". I was a bit disturbed by one particular scene - when the couple was being worked on in the ER after they had been attacked, the scenes kept flashing back to a love scene. This went on for the duration of the ER scene: gentle touching...then bloody bodies...flash back to clothes being removed lovingly...then clothes being cut off in the ER. I'm sure they were trying to show the contrast of love and gentleness, against violence and brutality, but it was kind of creepy.

On one hand, it's a well made film. The acting is great, the characters believable. On the other hand, its quite bloody and violent. And I think the ending was unfortunate, as it made it seem like all the wrongs were somehow "OK". I walked away from "The Brave One" feeling like the good guys got suckered into being the bad guys.