Jodie Foster Movie:

		List Price: $35.99		Label: Warner Home Video Salesrank: 2157 Released: February 5, 2008
		Our Price: $11.39
		Used Price: $10.80
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
?Why don?t they stop me?? Erica Bain wonders. Bain a popular N.Y radio host watched her fianc? die and nearly lost her own life to a vicious random attack. Now she discovers a stranger within herself an armed wanderer in the urban night out for vengeance and at war with her own soul. Two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster as Erica joins Oscar nominee Terrence Howard as a determined cop hot on her trail. Erica?s future is uncertain but one thing is not: THE BRAVE ONE is a high- tension thriller that packs a visceral and emotional punch.Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS UPC: 085391139843 Manufacturer No: 113984

Description of The Brave One [Blu-ray]:
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

The Brave One [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Where to start?
2008-07-05 - I accidentally, somehow, started this movie about an hour in. The funny thing is that it actually would've been better. I went back and watched the beginning and it was what you already KNOW the movie is about. They really amp up the violence to make it "affect" you more, but it's a little too much and just makes you uncomfortable. Jodie Foster did a good job with the part. An interesting glimpse into the human condition, as well as the failure of law enforcement and the legal system in most criminal situations. Just okay...

Top Notch Movie
2008-07-03 - I love this movie and am sad I waited so long to see it...Im not sure what it says about me, but I rooted for her lol, and had no problem with her dispencing some vigilante justice. All around great movie with wonderful acting. 10 stars**********

Old wine in a new bottle
2008-07-01 - After watching the climax of this movie the first thing that came to mind was this. Wasn't the climax, a pivotal part of the movie, similar to what we saw over two decades ago in Clint Eastwood's "Sudden Impact". Sorry for letting out the spoiler but that is precisely how you are going to feel when you see the ending (provided you have already seen Sudden Impact). The story of a lone female killer seeking revenge is almost the same though some phsycological changes to the main character have been made in The Brave One. Unlike Sondra Locke's character in Sudden Impact, Jodie Foster's character in The Brave One seems to have a dual personality. The role is powerfully potrayed no doubt and both Jodie and Terence Howard who plays the detective enact good performances. I also thought Navin Andrews as Jodie Foster's boyfriend was a serous casting mistake. It was so difficult to accept them as a couple. The violence and language is strong and kids certainly need to be kept out. Had the ending been different I would have rated the movie higher.

actors better than the material
2008-06-30 - i'd give this film 2 1/2 out of four . the editorial write up pretty well nails it . you won't find any spoilers here . if you're here to buy this film sight unseen , i'd have to advise against that . i saw the picture free from my local library and i'm still on the fence about it . the two central performances are good and the vigilante aspect gratifying in the moment(s) and for a while afterwords . i like revenge pictures and appreciated this films' suprise ending but found the realism and other aspects wanting . i thought some things were well done (the indifferent and overwhelmed precinct , the lead cops' partner , the initial incident and recovery) . overall , i found it too implausable and shabily manipulative to merit any real scrutiny . needed a few rewrites , a different director and the recasting of jodie foster's character (a terrific actress , but wrong for this material) in my opinion .

better than I expected
2008-06-26 - I was initially a little dubious about watching this movie, worried that it would be a tear-jerker. It wasn't.

It also wasn't a revenge/action movie, though that's definitely part of it.

Erica Bain's (Jodie Foster) fiance David (Naveen Andrews) is killed in front of her, and The Brave One is the story of how she deals with that. She buys herself a gun to feel safer, and then finds herself courting danger with the gun for protection, and finally becoming a vigilante.

But it's not something she sets out to do--she's not trying to be a superhero, and she's not reveling in the violence or even remotely feeling good about it--she's just trying to feel safe.

Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) is the detective on her fiance's case, and ultimately on her own, and he plays a sounding board, conscience, and catalyst.

Gah. I'm having a terrible time describing this movie. It's always so much easier to say what I don't like than what I do.

One scene that sticks in my mind is when Erica is in the emergency room, the action is interposed with a love scene between her and David. It's visually poignant and powerful. And there are a lot of similarly powerful scenes.

Okay, I give up. Bottom line: I loved the movie.