World Famous Comics: The Brave One (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]
The Brave One (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]
Starring: Terrence Howard Directed By: Neil Jordan Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: HD DVD Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 26, 2008 Running Time: 122 minutes Theatrical Release Date: September 14, 2007
Product Description: ?Why don?t they stop me?? Erica Bain wonders. Bain a popular N.Y radio host watched her fianc? die and nearly lost her own life to a vicious random attack. Now she discovers a stranger within herself an armed wanderer in the urban night out for vengeance and at war with her own soul. Two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster as Erica joins Oscar nominee Terrence Howard as a determined cop hot on her trail. Erica?s future is uncertain but one thing is not: THE BRAVE ONE is a high- tension thriller that packs a visceral and emotional punch.Format: DVD HD Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS UPC: 085391139874 Manufacturer No: 113987
Amazon.com: Neil Jordan's somber The Brave One is a lot of things. A reflective movie about a crime victim's sense of dislocation and isolation from her own life following a harrowing trauma, the film will strike a chord with a lot of people who have known violence. The Brave One is also a provocative drama about the nature of justice, a theme explored endlessly in American movies that typically find law enforcement wanting. In Jordan's film, however, the conflict between instinctive vigilantism and legal protocols is approached with more deliberateness and complexity than usual. Finally, despite its seriousness of purpose, The Brave One, to a certain extent, is drearily tethered to the old atrocity-and-revenge genre, bumping along to the familiar, Death Wish-like rhythms of an avenger seeking successive conflicts with bad guys he or she can blow away.
Somewhat at cross-purposes, The Brave One stars Jodie Foster in a shattering performance as Erica Bain, a popular essayist on a public radio station in New York. In love and engaged to David (Naveen Andrews), a doctor, Erica and her fiancé are brutally attacked one night by a gang of thugs. David is killed but Erica survives, only to find herself a stranger in her own skin, facing down her fears by shooting violent criminals.
With the city riveted by her anonymous actions, Erica becomes an object of curiosity for a police detective (an excellent Terrence Howard) disillusioned by his own struggles to protect the innocent from truly evil men. Jordan's previous films (The Crying Game, Breakfast on Pluto) resonate with The Brave One's most interesting angle, i.e., that each of us possesses a hidden element in our identities that comes out in extreme circumstances, making us wonder who we really are. It's all excellent food for thought, but the film squanders much of its significance by thrusting Erica into numerous, outlandish situations in which her only alternative is to put a bullet in a bad guy. The result is a smart film tediously structured like a disposable B movie. --Tom Keogh
Excellent movie. Blu-Ray the best. Purchased the Blu-Ray version and not disappointed. Jodie can be an excellent actress and the material very interesting and thoughtful.
Jodi Foster at her very best It seems to me that Jodi Foster does not age. Which, of course, is a beautiful thing. Her eyes are piercing blue and translucent that give her particularly dreamy look in this movie. She plays a woman who is attacked, along with her fiancee, in the NYC's Central Park as they walk the dog. It is sensless and brutal beating and the scenes about the attack are disturbing. While Erica Bain (Foster's character) survives the attack, her boyfriend is killed. Considering how much in love they both were with each other, this outcome is devastating for Erica. before long, she is cruising streets of New York at night taking vengeance on the bad guys in the grocery stores, subway and even her attackers. During this she becomes friends withthe police detective who connects wih Erica's feelings onthe emotional level. Being recently divirced, he suferred "a little death" compared to the real death of her boyfrined. Both people are devastated by their lost companions and the lonely, cruel world thay are left into. They understand each other completely and that is what saves this film at the end. The strongest point of the movie is Foster's voice (she is a radio person) and her quiet narration of her New York stories is riveting. Her voice is mesmerizing and her "stories" true beauty of this film. If there is a book on tape with Jodi Foster narrating it, I want to know - because I want HER to tell me the story.
Jodie saves another one Jodie's talent saves another thinly plotted script. How many life and death situations does an average citizen get into? Does anyone believe that this-what 5'4 woman really beat up fully capable 6'1 or more man with a crowbar-oh and toss him over a high drop parking deck? I like a little vigilante justice...in my Hollywood movies only, but the final moment with Terrence Howard helping her out in the end was just a bit too much. They weren't THAT close. Still despite being predictable, the film does deliver the suspense. I understand the need to have dark scenes, but I hate that almost nuclear green tint these films use. I always feel like I need a bath after watching two hours with that slimy color. Overall The Brave One manages to entertain...because Jodie is always fascinating to watch.
The Sour Taste Of Revenge... Certain parallels between Charles Bronson's Death Wish and THE BRAVE ONE have undoubtedly already been drawn, and rightfully so. Both focus on vigilante justice by a man (or woman) who was wronged by thugs. But herein lay the ONLY similarity, making The Brave One a somewhat unique animal.
What drove Bronson's Paul Kersey character was anger, whereas Jodi Foster's Erica Bain is driven by fear after a brutal attack in a New York park that leaves her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews, Lost TV Series) dead and herself in a coma for weeks.
Erica, a well-known radio personality, has to try and get her life back on track, but fear of everything infringes upon her every wish. Walking down hallways make her dizzy, and going out at night is out of the question. Upon returning to work she finds she can hardly breath and confides much to her boss Carol (Mary Steenburgen, The Dead Girl). Coming to terms with her fear, Erica purchases an illegal handgun and, after finding herself near another person who's violence dismayed her, kills someone with her new gun. Her hand is steady. She doesn't shake. Her life of fear is changing into...something else.
A path of vigilante deaths get the cops involved and Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow) is on the case. He's also involved in trying to solve the murder of Erica's fiancé and the two form an unusual relationship based on suspicion and the dichotomy of right versus legalities. Their interplay is unique and tenuous as the two learn more about each other and come to a mutual form of respect ...and perhaps much more.
Those similarities I mentioned at the beginning are now sorely lost. Mainly because Bronson's Paul Kersey (a man and the stereotype for vigilantism) and Foster's Erica Bain (a woman and not a stereotype) are in different ballparks. Kersey did it for revenge from the get-go, while Bain's in initially about how to deal with her fear, but later becomes a convoluted form of animalistic revenge. The damage she's doing to herself are felt within the character and not from without. Her realization that she "doesn't tremble" when she kills someone is both unsettling and comforting. That she gets better and better at killing is equally so.
The biggest problem with the film, however, is that it initially sets Terrence Howard's Detective Mercer up as a very good and forthright cop, but in the end he is anything but that. He crosses the line between right and legally right with exceptional ease, which kind of ruined the ending for me; too simplistic for such a complex man.
But nothing can be taken away from Jodi Foster (Inside Man). Still plugging along after all these years, she's still able to carry a film's weight with grace, honor and sheer terror.
A worthy evening diversion for those interested in the genre.
worth the time I was hoping The Brave One would live up to the hype of being an incredible edge of your seat thriller/drama, but it didn't happen that way. Instead it was a merely good enough film that offered just enough action and excitement to give it a passable rating.
What was a bit odd was how the action scenes just sort of appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, Jodie would find herself in a situation where she had to use her nifty little gun that she bought for a high dollar price, to fire off some shots at the bad guys who'd come into the picture and mess with her. Now, if she had to use the gun as often in real life as she did here, I'd strongly consider moving out of that dangerous city. It wasn't believable in that sense.
I think another thing I didn't like was the whole "radio show" bits that would creep in every now and then. Whenever Jodie interviewed someone for her show, that would almost immediately take away all the excitement from the story and make it as boring as possible.
But, we can't deny Jodie's performance was really good, like always. She's one of the best actresses doing movies. Always has been, in fact. Some pacing issues aside, along with some storyline bits that make us question reality, it was a good movie
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