Eye Candy #187 - "The Brave One"

The Brave One:  And here we have the feminist answer to “Death Wish” and the rest of the male-oriented revenge genre. Jodie Foster is radio personality Erica Bain, who shares stories about New York City on a NPR-like station. She and her fiancé (Naveen Andrews) are attacked by three thugs in Central Park one evening, and he is beaten to death while she is merely beaten. They also steal her German Shepherd. Erica becomes understandably withdrawn, but finds herself purchasing a gun. Then, during a freak shooting at a convenience store in which she is the only customer, she witnesses a shooting between a couple, and uses her own gun to defend herself. And suddenly Erica finds she has a taste for it and goes looking for trouble, with most of her victims being violent, slovenly male perverts (apparently, throw a rock, you’ll hit one in NYC). Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard, in a good role) is on the case to determine who this serial shooter is, and ends up inadvertently striking up a friendship with Erica, as she incorporates his story into parts of her radio narrative. Here we go - this movie would be good if it wasn’t so preposterous – apparently Erica has lived in a bubble where no violent crime has ever reached her, yet once her boyfriend is killed, she’s like a violence magnet. She can’t barely go to the store without a shooting taking place, or an attempted rape, or finding a pimp who beats hookers. And the film paints a horrible view of men – they are either weak, killers, and rapists, and they are all clueless. And it wasn’t that she had all her normalcy taken from her with the attack – she was never normal, and naïve in the extreme. That just wasn’t believable. And Erica, who has never used a gun before the attack, suddenly becomes incredibly proficient (we’re talking sharpshooter quality here). Normally I really enjoy the work of director Neil Jordan, but this falls short. Woodchuck sez, “Could have been great…but it wasn’t.”