The Brave One (Full-Screen Edition) | 
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| Director: Neil Jordan
Actor: Terrence Howard
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $28.98
Buy Used: $0.59
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Avg. Customer Rating:  174 reviews
Sales Rank: 30113
Format: Full Screen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 122
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 1000036240
UPC: 883929004607
EAN: 0883929004607
ASIN: B0010HOZVW
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: February 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show "Street Walk." At night, she goes home to the love of her life, her fiance David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). But everything Erica knows and loves is ripped from her on one terrible night when she and David are ambushed in a random, vicious attack that leaves David dead and Erica close to it. Though Erica's broken body heals, deeper wounds remain--the devastation of losing David and, even more overwhelming, a suffocating fear that haunts her every step. The city streets she had once loved to roam, even places that had been warm and familiar, now feel strange and threatening. When the fear finally becomes too much to bear, Erica makes a fateful decision to arm herself against it. The gun in her hand becomes a tangible way to protect herself from an intangible enemy...or so she thinks. The first time she shoots someone, it is kill or be killed. The second time is also in self-defense...or did she make a choice not to take herself out of harm's way? The fear that had once paralyzed her has been replaced by something else...something that drives her to reclaim the life that was taken from her that night...something that Erica does not even recognize in herself. Stories of an anonymous vigilante grip the city, and NYPD detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) becomes increasingly determined to track down the killer. As he pieces together the clues, the evidence begins to point not to a guy with a gun...but a woman with a grudge. With Mercer closing in and her own conscience trying her, Erica must decide whether her quest for some form of justice, and even vengeance, is truly the right path, or if she has become the very thing she is hunting.
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 169 more reviews...
 Jodie, you're better than this! June 9, 2009
Weak re-telling of 'Death Wish' with Jodie Foster as the wronged victim who fights (shoots) back. I'm surprised she was involved in this movie, both for the topic and the overall weakness of it. Watched the first hour, then ended up fast-forwarding through the last 45 minutes just to see how it ended.
 One of the best films of the year! June 5, 2009
I don't condone vigilante violence...but some people just flat deserve it! Jodie Foster is one of my top 5 favorite actresses of the 20th and 21st centuries. She seems to put her "all" in every project she tackles. She should get an Oscar just for putting her name in a movie billing.
 Death Wish meets Spiderwoman June 1, 2009
Why does an intelligent actress like Jody Foster keep churning out these silly blood and gore thrillers? In this one, she takes revenge for the beating death of her fiance by pulling Bernie Goetz-like vigilante killings all over Manhattan while getting closer and closer to the cops as a radio journalist. She acts like some caped crusader, wiping out what she takes as evil. There's even a heavy dose of "Why don't they stop me before I kill again?" silliness going on. Trash, but watchable for a night's light entertainment.
JODIE FOSTER CAN DO NO WRONG May 23, 2009
This movie is Ms. Foster at her finest. She's mesmerizing in anything she's in, and the only thing she could do better is act in more movies! I can't get enough. Jodie, you absolutely rule, and your portrayal of Erica Bain is stunning.
Entertaining 'Neo Noir' May 20, 2009
This was entertaining. Sure, one can't help but draw comparisons and think back to the most famous vigilante film of all time: "Death Wish," but this film stands on its own story. No, it's not "Death Wish," but it's not far from it, storywise.
It's different enough to keep us guessing what "Erica" will do next so, in that regard, it's good value for your entertainment dollar, particularly if you enjoy film noirs. This would be labeled a "neo noir" today.
I was a little skeptical about Jodie Foster playing a Charles Bronson-type shooter, but she pulled it off convincingly. The difference in "Erica Bain" and Bronson's "Paul Kersey" was minimal except she seemed to be more depressed over who she had become, once she started killing. Foster, by the way, shows no signs of slowing down as an actress and this was a juicy role for her.
The ending a little unsatisfying to a number of reviewers, both here and in national publications. That's all I will say on that, as I don't want to spoil anything for readers who haven't seen the movie. You make up your own mind what you think of it, and the message it conveys.
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