Review of :

THE BRAVE ONE.


“Vengeance , Revenge don’t take a tremendous amount of courage . That’s mostly driven by anger, hatred and that sort of overcomes your natural fear and inhibition . But the desire to Live, when you don’t want to live anymore, and to reconstitute yourself after you have been broken apart is what the courage is about.”
That’s why we called it : THE BRAVE ONE.
Roderick Taylor, Writer.
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Most B movies are attempts to make it into the Big Leagues. The best ones are those that have all the elements of excellence, without the money to deliver the sort of goods which ever more demanding audiences expect.
THE BRAVE ONE is unique, as it does the reverse : It is an “A” movie trying to be a “ B” movie. The sort of money that was spent filming this film is probably enough to keep a small third world country supplied in guns and ammo for a year. Were the effort and expense worthwhile ? One hopes so. Perhaps enough people will watch the film and give pause to the moral predicaments which this story tries to picture.
Jodie Foster , our star performer , says in the special ‘making of’ feature :
“ I think this is very much a Genre movie, I mean: That’s what you hope you’re making, but the quality of what your saying and the meaningfulness , the significance of what you’re saying is more than just an imitation of old films.”
The issues that are facing modern urban environments are perhaps no different than those which every living being that has ever walked the earth has faced. But the issues facing America, one of the most successful agglomerations of life in the history of Humanity—of which New York is a microcosm --- are not only Quantitatively different, but also Qualitatively different from those of the empires of the past. This because individuality and self-development- in short freedom , have reached unprecedented levels.
In some ways life is all about survival and self-defence and about somehow balancing the needs of the One and those of the Many. Revenge , race issues, hate are all packed into this Pandora box of a film. Crossing the line into violent self- expression , the irreparable alteration that occurs to any living being who experiences victimization and violation , both as a Victim and as a Perpetrator , are neatly delineated in this film. This is a Concerto in two movements : First the Heroine is destroyed, violated, all she cares for ripped away from her. Then she is reborn into a new being , the same but different . She also destroys and violates.
“ There is no going back to that other person, to that other place. This thing, this stranger, she is all you are now.”
In a sense she loses her individuality.
Answering the question posed by the young prostitute ( whose life she interferes with in an attempt to save her ) Erica Bain says :
Prostitute : Who are you ?
Erica : I am nobody
Later in the film , the young girl is questioned by the police , with Erica present .
Erica: Tell them the truth . Tell them what you saw.
Young girl: I saw Nobody. And Nobody saw me .

This is a neat semantic trick. A perfect example of how language can distract . The girl tells the truth , without actually exposing the lie which Erica is living .
Throughout much of the film, the heroine grapples with the issue of self-disclosure, dissimulation and anonymity, a difficulty artfully well depicted in the scene which takes place in the Diner. Her new found friend policeman and she , talk to each other without looking at each other…all the while seeing each other reflected in the mirror. The policeman suspects something, but
does not wish to confront. Part of him is unwilling to confront and expose the person whom he suspects of committing crimes .
If crimes are being committed, this often means excessive freedom is being exerted. At the foundation of American society, besides the historic Revolt against unfair imperial taxation, is the Constitution, the document which enshrined-- for perhaps the first time in known history-- the principle that every one , even the most apparently undeserving , has the right to a fair trial .
Of course the dilemma this creates, by protecting people who commit unjust acts is a painful one. This dilemma is also at the core of American life and is also far from being new. Cop shows treat of the subject daily on Cable Television .
In the center of the film is quoted one of the twentieth centuries most beleaguered and prophetic writers :
“ The essential American Soul is Hard. Isolate, Stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted."
D.H. Lawrence.
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The ever recurring problem of what being American is about is carefully detailed in this film...

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Jodie Foster :
“I’ll say it a thousand times : My character is wrong and she knows it . It is a terrifying and terrible thing to see somebody whose intellect can’t change what her body is doing—and that’s her reaction to fear, It’s what’s happened to her , has turned her into this stranger, someone that she doesn’t even recognize.
Is it right? No it’s not right”

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Intertwined with the right to fair hearing is of course the so-called right to bear Arms.
It is an old story. No doubt if there were fewer weapons on earth, fewer people would die from weapon provoked injuries…though there are other ways to kill. If not a persons body, certainly a persons mind or life-force can be removed from them, or disabled, by other means. Definitely , ‘the gun’ , as an American utility, refined from one of it’s earliest forms and developed by Samuel Colt, then further modified through the years , has democratized killing , made It more easily accessible to the everyday person .

Jodie Foster :
“The second that you buy a gun, fear is yours. You’ve walked into a culture that immediately puts you in danger….and puts others in danger of you.”

The other protagonist and Hero of the film ( well , yes, let’s forget Jodie Foster for the moment ) Detective Mercer , the policeman friend mentioned above , ( Played by Terrence Howard ) , is the other side of the coin which is being flipped in this morally complex dilemma tale. For as emotionally- driven and instinct – driven as is our heroine, so detective Mercer is the voice of reason and the incarnation of fair play. Erica Bain has compromised her "middle class" moral values to pursue an enemy on her own terms. Detective Mercer must also eventually face a similar choice : compromise his professional integrity and deontological code of ethics to pursue a friendship , with a person whom obscure forces have sent his way to populate his solitude, or instead , remain aloof in the upholding of legal correctness.

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Mercer:
It’s amazing what a dead body can tell you …
BAIN:
So the dead do talk ?
MERCER:
Oh yeah, everybody talks. Now almost everybody lies, but the dead can’t . But then again the lies tell you things too , because people tell them for a reason .
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Much as Erica Bain must live with the lie she is creating because she now has an alter ego, or in reprehensible pop-psychology-talk terms , a double personality ; so Detective Mercer must live with the truth he is slowly uncovering , which his friend so hopes he will expose. Both of them must enter a moral no-man's/no-woman's land , but for different reasons-- In this roller coaster ride both start at different points in the continuum between the extremes of Good and Evil. They cross paths, as both shift their positions ... The Heroine moves toward the telling of the truth , the Hero towards the telling of a lie . Both will become different as a result. Whether for better or for worse we will never know.
But then, this is only Film, right?