BRAVE ONE, THE - Blu-ray review

Jodie Foster looks old and busted in "The Brave One," a vigilante film from Director Neil Jordan. A little too thin and with dark circles around her eyes, the typically lovely Foster makes for a believable victim of a horrendously violent crime. She looks simply horrible through "The Brave One" and I can buy into her being a terribly frightened woman who struggles to survive after watching her fiancé beaten to death and recovering from a three week coma, herself. That aspect of "The Brave One" is nicely done, and Foster does a fairly decent job of conveying a level of badassedness throughout the film that is amplified with her continual smoking of cigarettes and tough-looking jackets. Foster is a fine actress and she did manage to earn a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in "The Brave One," but once you get past Foster's performance, the film begins to quickly unravel.

"The Brave One" is Neil Jordan's attempt to reinvigorate the vigilante genre and tap into the audience that made the "Death Wish" series of films a profitable venture for its star, Charles Bronson. With Jodie Foster beginning to show signs of aging at the forty-five years old, her bankability as a leading lady now requires roles that use her great acting talent and do not rely on her looks. She has never been a glamorous leading lady and has played a few very tough characters, so casting her in "The Brave One" makes perfect sense and nicely works with today's continual push for female empowerment movies. The film certainly pushes the concept of revenge and ultimately allows for the heroine to get the vengeance she thirsts for. However, even with Foster's talent and a few nice scenes that bring back fond memories of the older genre films, "The Brave One" is fatally flawed.

The problem with "The Brave One" lies in its storytelling and execution. Not executions of characters, mind you, but the taking the concept of a leading lady going on a rampage and putting it to celluloid. The film begins with a rather violent attack on the character of Erica Bane (Jodie Foster) and her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews) going for a walk with their pet German Shepherd. When their dog runs off to chase a ball and doesn't return, they go and find the animal, but discover that it is being held by a trio of thugs who have decided they want a sizable reward to return the animal. When David and Erica refuse to meet their demands and one of the men begins to get frisky with Erica, David tries to fight the men, but this only results in an extremely violent assault with leaves David dead and Erica is thrown into a coma. Although this seems a little heavy handed, the film starts on the right foot with the attack.

For a woman who makes her living walking the streets of New York City and then talking about them on the radio, her awakening finds her deathly afraid of the Big Apple and the movie loses its focus. She is frustrated that the police are completely inept at alleviating her fears with the investigation of David's murder and she begins to become more and more frightened. Erica goes out and purchases herself a gun through illegal means to defend herself. Instead of having her going on the prowl to inflict justice or have a believable event that opens her eyes as a vigilante, the film insults its audience by having her very quickly be a singular witness to a fatal shooting at a convenience store. This scene was just too convenient and filmmakers must have thought that audiences don't mind having their intelligence insulted because they find Erica running into convenient situations where she can dole out justice with a gun. Every scene after the initial attack is just too damn coincidental and convenient.

When the film starts to get back on the right foot and finds Erica being the primary suspect as the vigilante by her new friend Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) while she finally is given the opportunity to seek out the bad guys and not just run into them on a nightly basis, the movie makes another huge mistake. Mercer is portrayed throughout the film as the most honest and honorable police detective on the planet. The film goes out of its way to let the audience know that Mercer would arrest Erica is it comes down to a situation where he catches her shooting a bad guy. But when the chips are laid out on the table, Mercer folds like a bad hand and helps her achieve her goal of avenging the death of David. This was another solid blow to the chin of the audience and deflated any dramatic momentum that was gained with the character of Mercer and the final climax where Erica discovers the identity of her attacker and her fiancé's killer.

I just felt that "The Brave One" tossed aside any semblance of serious screenwriting and completely relied on just having things happen by sheer coincidence. I'm not sure if Jodie Foster's character ran across one innocent person during a nighttime scene and the streets of New York were inhabited by nothing more than evil people. The character was a vigilante by defending herself early and this worked well enough, but when Erica ran across a character that Mercer had mentioned he wanted to get off the streets, the film's convenient moments go overboard in a way that was far too laughable to allow for any dramatic investment in her turning the corner and becoming a vengeful killer and not a frightened woman simply defending herself against the hordes of rapists and murderers that crossed her path. The film's ending almost made up for the earlier shortcomings when Erica went after the man she wanted to kill the most, but Mercer's selling out was another horribly written plotline in the story.

"The Brave One" isn't a bad film for all of its shortcomings. The acting of Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard was solid and they helped carry the thinly written story. Foster was especially good and Howard represented a truly noble person who should have saved Foster's character by tossing her skinny ass in jail. Then, he could have fed her a sandwich. Instead, he gives in to his feelings for her and aids her in her blood-quenched thirst. Aside from that flaw, I enjoyed the character of Mercer. The first two shootings by Erica Bane were well done sequences, regardless of how coincidental they were. It took the character three bullets to hit her victim the first time she fired a gun, but you could see the evolution of her vigilantism during the second murder. This film could have been a very good film had it been written better and the story stayed true to its characters, but it manages to do a few things well enough that you don't feel as if you've totally wasted your time when the credits begin to crawl.

Video:

"The Brave One" is presented in a detailed and strong looking VC-1 encoded transfer. Shown in its theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and possessing the full 1080p resolution, the film isn't quite reference material, but it is an above average looking film that makes the dangerous streets of New York City look beautiful. The level of detail is extremely strong and added to the old and busted appearance of Jodie Foster. You could count the wrinkles around her eyes. The streets and locations filmed look quite strong in detail. Coloring was also strong and the film's hues were bright and properly contrasted. The film's style reminds me in some ways of Neil Jordan's "The Crying Game" in its palette and the director purposely pushes for cooler colors to show the dark place inhabited by Foster's character. Fleshtones are a little off because of the color filters used, but look quite good. Black levels are incredibly strong and the source materials are perfectly clean. I can't recall any noticeable flaws in either the source elements or the digital presentation and this is a very solid looking film.

Audio:

Warner Bros. provides a clean sounding Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix for "The Brave One" as well as Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks in English, Quebec-dubbed French and Spanish. The TrueHD mix is, as typical, the way to go with the soundtrack and it is noticeably cleaner and more detailed than the basic Dolby Digital soundtrack. The standout element of the sound mix is the musical score by Dario Marianelli. It sounded wonderful and inhabited all six channels to effectively add to the tone of the picture. Gunfire echoes from all channels and the ambient sounds of the subway and the busy streets of New York City move cleanly from front to back and bring along the .1 LFE channel for more depth. Bass is deep and strong. Dialogue from both the on-screen dialogue and Jodie Foster's narration is crisp and clean. "The Brave One" is not an in-your-face soundtrack, but it is very nicely done and uses the available technology to make the film more entertaining than it deserves to be.

Extras:

"The Brave One" Comes packed with a slim number of bonus materials. The value added content begins with I Walk the City (21:41) and features director Neil Jordan discussing how "The Brave One" is his homage to the vigilante film genre that includes such classics as Charles Bronson's "Death Wish." The middle-length making-of feature is more promotional fluff than it is behind-the-scenes material. Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard and Joel Silver also provide some interview snippets, but the feature never gets too deep into anything. A collection of Additional Scenes (6:45) are thrown together and shown in a very droll 480p resolution complete with letterboxing and pillar boxing. The scenes are pretty decent in content and provides a little more back story to the characters, but these short sequences do not add anything of great value to the film. These two supplements are better than nothing, but "The Brave One" is a slim offering when compared to other Blu-ray releases.

Closing Comments:

I was underwhelmed and disappointed with "The Brave One." The premise of Jodie Foster playing a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante was wonderful and with Terrence Howard having a major role in the film, the cast was quite good. Unfortunately, the film struggled to provide a believable story to the character arc of Erica Bane and nearly every scene dripped of excessive convenience and coincidence. Instead of having the main character prowl the streets of New York, her victims literally fell into her lap. Naveen Andrews is quite familiar with flashbacks after his role on "Lost," but his flashbacks in this film didn't really belong in the film. This isn't what I would call a ‘bad' film, but it isn't that good either. It is passable entertainment that is saved by strong performances and the dangerous streets of New York City. The Blu-ray release features strong visuals and a very competent soundtrack and while I wouldn't call either reference material, they are well above average. The supplements are about as thin as Jodie Foster was in the film. Other than the sound and video, this could have been a better effort in both film value and supplements.