Vigilante movies are becoming a new trend, and when you think about it, the whole thing makes perfect sense. In our post 9/11 world, there's no better way to calm a movie viewer's nerves than to give them two hours of raw, blood soaked justice. When terror strikes and there's no one there to soften the blow, it's the ideal time to take matters into one's own hands. The idea here is to place us in the vigilante's shoes so we can ask ourselves if we would do the same thing. If a loved one was murdered in cold blood for no good reason, would we pick up a gun and start offing every person involved?The vigilante movies certainly don't make their cause seem very exciting. We almost expect to see a jolt of satisfaction as they off the wrong doers, but more often than not they look exhausted and afraid. The truth of the matter is, that's probably how most of us would feel if faced with the same situation (if we were to do it at all). The interesting thing about these movies is the fact that, on the surface, they're all the same; it isn't until you peel off the top layer that the differences are revealed. The biggest problem that comes to mind is that there have been so many vigilante thrillers as of late that it's hard to take them seriously anymore. They seem to work best now when played as pure exploitation (like James Wan's recent Death Sentence).
Thinking back over the movies in this "genre," the best ones have been exploitation pictures. It almost makes the experience more uncomfortable when we finally realize the whole movie has been an excuse for cheap thrills. Not that I'm saying Death Wish was not effective for what it was -- when you look at all four (!) of the sequels though, it's easy to see that the studio knew what the audience was really showing up for. With this in mind, is there any way to watch a vigilante movie anymore and actually care about what is going on? Will our culture, given its current fascination with violence and Old Testament justice, really want more than a series of killing sprees?
Neil Jordan is the last person I would have expected to try and breathe some new life into the vigilnate movie. While he's no stranger to dealing with characters undergoing psychological trauma, why would he choose this genre? After watching the first five minutes of The Brave One, it occurred to me that anyone could have made it. The opening credits carry with them the scent of a project that exists to score an easy paycheck. I didn't think Jordan was suffering from a lack of work. Despite my skepticism, I pressed on.
The Brave One is summed up accurately by its poster: Jodie Foster holding a gun in front of her crotch, pointing it down (see above). Foster's Erica Bain is on a walk through the park with her fiancee (Naveen Andrews) and dog when they are attacked by three male thugs. After taunting and robbing them, the muggers beat the stew out of Erica and her fiancee (he dies) with a pipe, a.ka. phallic object (plus they steal her dog). After three weeks in a coma, Erica wakes up, sad and angry. As expected, the cops offer to help but she doesn't feel confident about it.
Erica is disoriented being back in the world again. She lives in New York City, where she always felt safe, but now every one around her is a potential attacker. Jordan uses soft focus and diagonal camera angles to give the audience Erica's perspective -- it comes off looking like a cheap attempt at being stylistic more than anything else. The constant fear leads Erica to buy a gun on the streets, and in the blink of an eye, she's fending off New York scum, Ms. 45 style!
Once Erica comes into possession of the gun, she wanders into one threatening situation after another, all involving evil men. You see, now that she's been abused by a phallic object, every man in the city is out to get her. It would have been fascinating had the movie explored that maybe this was all in her head, but I believe that would have required too much effort on the screenplay level. Her first encounter is in a convenience store where Erica sees a man ( filmmaker Larry Fessenden) shoot the woman behind the counter (she won't let him see their kids). The man comes after Erica next, so she blows him away.
Why didn't she just threaten him with the gun? Because she had to prove to him that her penis was bigger! This comes in to play to a more obvious extent during Erica's second kill on the subway. She's threatened by a bully who pulls a little curved knife on her. The whole sequence plays like a you show me yours, I'll show you mine scenario. Each confrontation acts as a slow build for Erica to reveal her penis envy, no more so than when she saves a drugged girl from her pimp.
All this would be easier to stomach if The Brave One didn't take itself so seriously. Foster's performance is so solemn (one characters describes her as being in "lockdown" mode) I kept waiting for her to suddenly break into a song and dance routine to lighten the mood. This onscreen persona is becoming Foster's specialty -- it's as if she can't make a movie anymore unless she ends up in some kind of crisis situation. If we are expected to take Erica at face value, maybe they should have had her visit a shrink or a focus group. I never for a moment felt like her damage was that deep.
Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) is the cop who knows Erica is guilty, even if he can't prove it right away. At first, it looks like the character might come with too much baggage; there's a scene with his ex-wife that I was afraid might turn into a subplot, but it doesn't. Mercer, thanks to Howard's thoughtful performance, turns out to be the most appealling character in the picture. The moments where he and his partner (Nicky Katt, funny but under used) investigate the crime scenes are a welcome distraction from the heavy handed melodrama with Erica.
The picture's conclusion will be familiar to anyone who's seen a vigilante movie before. However, unlike the chilling final sequence to Ms. 45, this movie's climax is not earned and feels like a last minute re-write. Had the movie been void of any rules, I might have been open to accept anything. But since it asked me care about Erica, I couldn't buy it. The ending helps clarify that The Brave One isn't a very brave movie at all; to be brave it would have taken some chances and slapped us in the face with its violence. The fact that it does neither makes it nothing less than cowardly.
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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
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