Jodie Foster is Wicked, Wicked Witch With Furious Vengeance in ‘The Brave One’

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CHICAGO – Jodie Foster reinvents herself and plays a vigilante flung galaxies out of character in “The Brave One,” which opened on Friday.

Though initially a blissfully love-struck woman who you’d think couldn’t swat a fly and “can’t feel my body without your arms around me,” a randomly tragic event brings out the wicked, wicked witch in her she didn’t know existed.

Jodie Foster in “The Brave One”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
While flirting dangerously close to her captor (played exquisitely by Terrence Howard), she wakes up at night to bring her own brand of swift justice onto villains who haven’t been nailed by the traditional legal system.

Think Spider-Man but much more violent or the Punisher but female.

The same woman who couldn’t even acquire a gun legally (Hollywood too easily and unrealistically helps her there) and certainly doesn’t even know how to fire one sure learns posthaste.

Terrence Howard in “The Brave One”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
After her first deliverance of cold-blooded justice, her hand doesn’t shake any more in its bang-bang operation.

Be careful of the bait and switch, though, as “The Brave One” flip-flops from start to finish between a heart film with a vigilante and a vigilante film with a heart. Director Neil Jordan and his trio of writers don’t seem to make up their minds which way this picture should go.

Though riding its story through is a bit of a nauseating seesaw, there’s undeniable entertainment value – for right or wrong – in watching bad guys get wasted. Issued by a vengeful woman – for right or wrong – delivers that much more in-your-face satisfaction.

Zoe Kravitz (left), Jodie Foster and Victor Colicchio in “The Brave One”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
While you could reduce a statement in the film merely to Hollywood trying to fill movie seats, I refuse to believe anyone with an axe to grind in reality could just as easily be swayed into such a blood-thirsty rampage.

Though some people surely could snap as she did, the film implies that anyone in her shoes would have done just the same. I can’t buy that.

As for the originality of this film and its story, points have to be deducted due to the prior existence of the independent film “Gold Digger Killer”. Though not even appearing on IMDb and likely unknown to most people, its description smacks suspectingly similiar:

When Imani is fired from a job that provides for her and her man, her life gets turned upside down. Not ready for the contained life of a cared-for woman, she becomes the ultimate victim.

When it comes time to seek revenge, Imani comes for the whole misogynistic system.

By ADAM FENDELMAN Editor-in-Chief HollywoodChicago.com adam@hollywoodchicago.com

© 2007 Adam Fendelman, HollywoodChicago.com

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