The Cinema of the Four

The Brave One

As any regular reader of these chronicles will have observed, I have a certain penchant for those cinematic cases involving women who serve justice, revenge, or other necessary thrashings upon those who need it. Thus, one might find it a bit surprising that I was so late to take up an investigation of Jodie Foster’s “The Brave One,” despite many calls from my friend Villiard the Fourth to do so.

Having finally made my way to the appropriate theater, however, I found that my time was well spent. Ms. Foster had once again lived up to her so richly deserved reputation, and we were left with a most thoughtful and moving adventure. While “The Brave One” follows a very well-trod path at the basest level, the victim who must make the wrong things right by avenging a loved one’s death, it gives us something more: a study in what it would take to follow that path.

Foster’s character, Erica Bain, does not fall under the tutelage of a martial arts master, resort to earlier military training, or any of the other standard ways of such characters. No, the urban jungle itself seems to teach her how to kill, one step at a time. And like any murderer, what first is almost an accident becomes something she gains a taste for. And as just as her cause may seem, there start to be elements of the serial killer in Bain, culminating in one premeditated murder that she has no motive for, other than just to take a vile villain away from this world.

Terrence Howard balances Foster as the detective who starts to see her for what she is, and must inevitably pass judgement on her crimes. And while Jodie Foster does an excellent job of letting us empathize with Erica Bain, it is Howard’s Detective Mercer whose shoes we must finally fill, deciding for ourselves how we feel about Bain. There’s a lot to think about in “The Brave One, “ a lot of philsophizing, but at the same time it doesn’t dawdle or become maudlin, even during the aftermath of terrible trauma.

It does its job wisely and well, and whether or not you agree with the drama’s final act, it is a movie well worth investigating.

What great-grandfather Sherlock most certainly would have said:
“I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?”