 Jodie Foster is inevitably being described as a female Charles Bronson in her role as Erica Bain, a New York woman bent on killing the men who brutally attacked her and murdered her fiance in Central Park. Claudia Puig in USA Today dismisses The Brave One as "a well-made but predictable take on the revenge fantasy thriller, with a female twist." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal describes it as "repetitive rather than resonant, an over-calculated, under-ventilated studio production -- even paranoid thrillers need to breathe -- whose plot machinery grinds grim and coarse." A.O. Scott in the New York Times adds that while the vigilante plot may "be viscerally satisfying [it] is a sign of just how cowardly The Brave One really is. It's a pro-lynching movie that even liberals can love." In a similar vein, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times comments that the movie amounts to an "unwise attempt to have it all, to attract the sensitive audience that swoons at Ms. Foster's nuanced performances as well as the yahoos who scream when evil blood is spilt." It would appear that Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post would count himself among the yahoos. "You may hate yourself for yielding to the expertise of the manipulation," he writes, "but the vicarious thrill of The Brave One is the sense of pulling your own trigger on pure evil and watching the bullet tear through." And Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune suggests that while the film may never be regarded as a classic, "it's the work of first-rate filmmakers and actors doing everything they can to find the truth in the pulp and the bloodlust." |
