In the two years that I've been writing reviews for Reel Opinions, one of the more common questions I've been asked is why I don't use a rating system of some sort. My automatic response is that a rating system allows the reader to know what I think without even having to read the review itself. There is also another reason. There are some movies that just can't be placed within an exact star-rating or a "thumbs up/thumbs down". The Brave One is one such movie. It's a good movie for the most part, but I have a lot of personal issues with it. Most of it has to do with the storytelling. Director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Breakfast on Pluto) has created a movie that I think will polarize some people, and leave some sitting on the fence. I guess I kind of fall in the second category.

New York public radio personality, Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), is forced to come to terms when her life is thrown out of order after her fiance, David (Naveen Andrews), is murdered by some thugs while the two are sharing a romantic evening walk through Central Park. At first, Erica is completely isolated, and is too afraid to even set foot outside of her apartment building after she returns home from the hospital. Even after stepping back into something resembling the life she once knew, she is still controlled by fear, and buys a gun illegally so that she can feel some sort of protection when she's out on the street. When Erica is forced to use the gun during another instant where her life is in danger, she is terrified to discover that she doesn't even feel remorse, and that she fears she is slowly turning into someone else. This begins a string of vigilante-style murders throughout New York staged by her, where she starts to take the law into her own hands, and finds her old self slipping away more and more. Meanwhile, a police Detective named Mercer (Terrence Howard) strikes up a bond with Erica, little realizing that she is the killer he is hunting for. In the back of Erica's mind, she knows it's only a matter of time before he puts the pieces together, and wonders if she should put everything on the line and confess to him.

It's impossible to watch The Brave One, and not think of the recent Kevin Bacon film, Death Sentence. That film covered a lot of the same themes, and was released in theaters just two weeks ago. The two films do manage to differentiate themselves enough, so that we don't feel like we're watching the same film twice. Bacon's film had its moments, but eventually slipped into over the top action set pieces and cartoon slasher movie gore that seemed like it belonged in another movie. The Brave One has its moments also, probably more than Death Sentence had. Not only is it much more realistic in its depiction of violence, it also takes a slightly more realistic and less melodramatic look at the material. There is a great scene early in the film that shows the direction that director Jordan and screenwriters Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor, and Cynthia Mort were going for. The first time Erica steps outside of her apartment building after coming home from the hospital, the city that was once so familiar to her seems strange and alien. Jordan shoots her surroundings in an overexposed light, making it seem foreign, and sometimes shows the scene from strange awkward angles. He also intensifies every sound around her, making even the footsteps of someone walking beside her seem menacing. It's a great moment, because both the film and Foster's performance sells it. It also allows us to sympathize with the character, as it puts us directly into her position. The scene needs no dialogue, because we are feeling the same things she is.

The movie continues to impress in the handling of the relationship between Erica and Detective Mercer. It is a strange relationship, because they never really come across as being friends. It almost seems as if they talk with each other, because they are interested in each other. They both seem to suspect that there is something that the other isn't telling them, and at the same time, they kind of don't want to know what that thing is. She interviews him for her radio program, he comforts her when she calls him late at night, and despite how close they seem to get with one another, there is always a visible distance that both they and us the audience can detect. And yet, there is mutual respect. In the key lead roles, both Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard do a great job at depicting their complex relationship. They never seem too close or too far apart from one another. They are able to strike a perfect balance of a relationship that seems warm and personal on the surface, but is very much unsure underneath. Their individual scenes are great as well. Foster portrays the transformation of her character from a confident woman who has everything, to someone who feels lost in a place that was once familiar to her with honesty and grace. She allows us to see the different stages of her character during the course of the film, so that we feel very close to her by the time the end credits come. Howard's Mercer character is not quite as well developed, but he still impresses with a performance that is sometimes touching, sometimes funny, but always on the mark for each scene.

For the most part, The Brave One is a quality film, and would be easy to recommend. And yet, I find myself on the fence, and that is for one key reason. I never felt like the movie ever resolves anything. The last five minutes of the film were extremely troubling to me as, not only does it leave just about everything open ended, it never really leads us to any sort of conclusion. I think an open-ended solution could have worked for this film, but the movie ends on the wrong note. It's too open ended, and we wonder why we sat through everything before it if the movie doesn't even really bother to solve anything. This is a movie that's content to end with someone being shot, but it's not that simple. In a brainless action movie like Shoot 'Em Up, yeah, that's acceptable. But here, it just didn't feel right. On my way home from the film, I realized something. It wasn't just the ending that was left open ended. It was everything else, as well. Absolutely nothing gets resolved. Just about every subplot I can think of being brought up in this movie is left dangling in the open with no closure at all. One subplot that's brought up every once in a while in the film concerns another case that Detective Mercer is working on. It revolves around a crime Kingpin who murdered his wife, has been given custody of their child, and Mercer fears for the child's safety. I'm doing my best to avoid spoilers here, but I will say just like the ending itself, the subplot is resolved with a death and then just leaves it at that. We never learn the most important part of the story, and it is never brought up again. Other subplots, such as Erica being on the job after her experience and with the murders weighing on her, are also simply breezed over and never really given any sort of closure whatsoever.
It's frustrating, because The Brave One is so obviously a good movie. And yet, it's built on such shaky storytelling that I can't figure out if I'm behind it or not. I'm faced with the question on wether or not I would recommend this movie, and I find myself searching for an answer. In a lot of ways, yes I would. It's well done, it has some great performances, and there's some good dialogue. But the story that all of these positives are built on is just not worthy enough. The shaky conclusion that it does eventually build to is not only morally questionable, but is also about as easy to swallow as having a cactus shoved down your throat. I'm not fully getting behind this movie, but I do think it deserves to be seen, just so that you can make your own opinion. You may see it differently than me. I personally saw it as a well made movie that needed to be built on a stronger foundation.

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