The Brave One

Confession: I watched this movie because Jodie Foster is too damn cute on the cover. We’ll see how my DVD cover instincts turn out judging a movie as a whole.

Foster plays Erica Bain, a radio show host doing a “life on the streets,” “slice of life,” “heavy prose” presumably public radio show that I typically hate in real life. She’s dating a swarthy doctor, and we get a tidy little, multi-cultural romance developing when on a walk through the park at night with their dog, they run into thugs and... BAM! They’re brutally mugged, very graphically portrayed. A weird emergency room scene then occurs intermixed with a flashback of the couple’s lovemaking.

With the PC/artistic overtones coupled with the gratuitous violence and sex, I’m beginning to think this movie is going to suck.

Terence Howard appears as a detective investigating the crime, and, well, he’s great, and the movie barometer’s plummet has slowed.

Erica wakes up after 3 weeks to a world drastically changed, and, well, she’s mad as hell. Apparently the police work is so top-notch that they’ve confused a mugging into a domestic dispute and are blaming Erica with beating her fiance to death with a pipe. I guess fingerprints, blood, fabric and DNA samples aren’t part of the investigative routine. I nitpick. Yet, she’s free to go home. I guess they’re just in the habit of making knowingly baseless accusations.

Oh, shit. Another flashback lovemaking scene. The barometer’s descent quickens. WE GET IT, OKAY? SHE MISSES HIM. BUT?! I DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH! WE LEARN HE PLAYED GUITAR FOR HER IN THIS BLURRED FLASHBACK? HELL, I MISS HIM TOO!

She goes to a gun store that she referenced by a photograph at an art exhibit (wtf?). They won’t sell her a gun immediately, but a dude approaches her outside and immediately sells her a gun in an alley? Hey - her fortunes are turning, no?

Some random women tells her she shouldn’t smoke because it could kill her. She doesn’t care! This Nubian earth mother tells her that she needs to figure out how to live. Profound!

Now Erica is in a convenience store. Dear God, please don’t... but God answers my prayer with a “no,” because, of course, she’s witness to a robbery in progress, and she pumps a few rounds into the perp.

I’m thinking a lovemaking flashback is due? Wait for it... wait for it... she stumbles back to her apartment and takes a shower in her clothes. My bad, not a flashback, but a stupid public radio prose monologue ruminating on the need to persevere.

I’m done. I gave it 40 minutes. Lesson? Don't judge a DVD by its cover.

In summation, I'll quote Christopher Orr, from the New Republic:

"The Brave One is not merely the most morally repellent film of the year, but a contender for the stupidest."