Jodie Foster seems to like the action hero role, and what star wouldn't if she can do it convincingly? It's the old James Stewart "everyman" who gets sucked into a extraordinary situation, and in this movie Jodie plays the victim of a brutal crime who takes matters into her own hands. If you are inclined to see the movie you'll probably see it regardless of what I say, but here's the spoiler alert for those who haven't seen it yet: Spoiler alert!
I seldom see first run movies, but I was in another city, and a relative and I saw two movies in one afternoon, one of which was The Brave One. And it was a pretty good movie. There were a few movie cliches, and the basic theme had been done a few decades ago by Charles Bronson, but it held its own.
So Jodie and her fiance go for a walk. The fiance is presented to us as such a likable guy that anyone who has seen the commercials knows that his role is to be the homicide victim. They stumble into a circumstance in which three thugs attack them, beat them, kill the fiance, and video tape the whole ugly scene.
And Jodie buys a gun.
A gun is probably seen by the Hollywood set as a device that transforms psychology, a device which can change an ordinary, decent citizen into a person who in the blink of an eye can become a mad murderer. And in the hands of a crime victim, like the one Jodie plays in the movie, a gun must turn her into a killing machine, a vigilante bent on cleansing the earth of scum, one or two thugs at at time. Doing what the cops can't.
But a satisfying movie needs the good guys prevailing over the bad guys with little or no consequences. And this was a satisfying movie. To someone who doesn't regularly see movies in theaters, it was interesting to hear audience members react to certain scenes. The movie makers created some frightening scenarios, and the audience can feel the terror that subway riders might feel when a couple of menacing creeps start harassing passengers. But we're comforted, because we know Jodie is packing a piece in her purse. And the audience applauds the screen as the tables are turned, and a bad boy buys a ticket to eternity.
Okay, a minor quibble. The investigators say they found 9mm casing where she's done her thing, but Jodie's gun looked exactly like a .45 caliber Sig Sauer P220 ST. And her reconciliation with the lawman was a bit contrived, but hey, it's only a movie.
All in all, it was very entertaining. And it will be interesting to see how well it scores in the competition for ticket dollars. There's action, there's excitement, there's revenge, there's good conquering evil. But Death Wishes 1thru 5 came out when the NY crime rate was much higher -- didn't Rudy Giuliani clean all that up? Anyway, we'll see how audiences take to it.