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Neil Jordan cemented himself as a director to watch in 1992 with his highly controversial film The Crying Game, a film known for its subversion of gender roles. Jordan’s latest picture, The Brave One, seeks to repeat this pattern – it is essentially oestrogen-induced revenge fare, a Death Wish minus the testosterone, if you will, with a slight dash of Falling Down to it, also.
Whilst the concept of a female protagonist violently avenging social injustices is a breath of fresh air, Jordan almost falls at the first hurdle in painting a portrait of happy families in soon-to-be husband and wife Erica (Jodie Foster) and David (Naveen Andrews). The idea of “tragedy strikes the perfect couple” became redundant decades ago, yet directors and writers still insist on exploiting it.
Nonetheless, the plot moves forward fairly quickly, and fortunately, for want of a better term, the idyllic paradise is soon enough usurped. In a brutal attack, David is killed, and Erica is left in a coma, and I move to applaud Jordan’s gritty and visceral filmmaking approach. Furthermore, in the subsequent hospital scenes, as the doctors race to save their lives, Jordan holds nothing back – he shows blood-smeared breasts, and does so without it appearing either gratuitous or exploitative, but simply raw.
The initial stages of the film are not free of contemplative, broodish scenes, and whilst they do hurt the pace of the film, causing it to plod along, considering how well Jordan knows the camera, and how competently shot these interludes are, they seem neither superfluous nor tiresome. Moreover, they are few and far between in this picture. It can be said as a general rule, in fact, that the film is expertly shot – the constantly rotating camera gives an ubiquitous feeling of unease, and reinforces Erica’s own trepidation about venturing back into the outside world.
There are times when The Brave One almost appears to be criminalising the police themselves, or rather, the proceduralism of their line of work. It is this concept that essentially kick-starts Erica’s rampage, but I’m pressed to consider whether the system really is to blame, as, after all, is it really feasible to levy a cost-effective replacement?
As strong as the film by-and-large is, what bothered me most in the film’s establishing scenes is how quickly and coincidentally Erica is thrown into a situation whereby she is able to utilise her gun (which she illegally purchased). It feels very contrived, yet one can almost forget this when Jordan dazzles us with a wonderful slow-motion shot of Erica’s face, moments after using her gun – it is a credit to not only Jordan and his director of photography, but to Foster as an actress, using her face to speak without voice.
It isn’t long before Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) arrives on the scene, and as is bitingly truthful of our society and our expectations of the perpetration of violence, he suspects anything other than a female shooter. The script could have simply used “they”, yet “he” is used almost exclusively until the latter portion of the film, a decidedly sharper inflexion on the part of writers Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort.
Erica never seems to assume the “badass” persona that many lesser films would have conferred upon her – one can practically feel the adrenaline rushing through her body in each violent transgression, thanks to Foster’s extraordinary physical acting. However, soon enough, one can begin to question the morality of Erica’s interactions – she knows that she shouldn’t use her gun, but she does, she’s angry. It follows very succinctly that she is disenfranchised with society, and is very wet around the ears. However, she claims that she doesn’t shake when using the gun, yet vomits after dropping two thugs – this characterisation, I must state, is thus somewhat confusing.
In Erica’s first violent outburst, we witness her covering her tracks, yet in her second, which takes place aboard a train, the fact that 99% of all train stations (and trains, no less) are now equipped with cameras is conveniently glossed over. This is one of the few indisputable logical fallacies in the film, and it bothered me, although not as much as it should have, given the veritable strength of the film as a collective.
As Detective Mercer begins to get hot on the trail of Erica, the film assumes a stance that resembles a more volatile version of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down – we are truly unsure as to where, if anywhere, Erica’s sanity lies. What the film quite daringly ventures to do is make Erica and Mercer incredibly friendly with each other, making the chance of a cop-out ending later on far less likely (although my discussion of that will come later). As Erica interviews Mercer for her radio show, the lines of morality between a citizen and a police officer very clearly become blurred – those in uniform wish to serve justice simply as we do, but it as if they become too immersed in the procedure and administrative milieu of their work that they are blinded by it.
As The Brave One progresses, Erica transforms from someone of morally dubious character to one who is more or less morally bankrupt, diverging from simply repelling would-be assailants to actively becoming a vigilante. She kills those even the police wish dead, but in her act of cleaning the streets, she is attacking those unrelated to herself. Still, I find it important to stress that she knows this – the script is self-referential in its morality, and so to deem the film “morally confused” as many in the film press have is incorrect. Her actions reflect her irrational mentality in lieu of her fiancé's death, and to judge her morality in relation to those of “normal” people is unfair.
The key point of contention for the film is an interesting moral dilemma – will Mercer, with his ever-increasing array of evidence, turn Erica in, or, with his flourishing friendship and sympathy towards her, will he let her go? The finale is nail-bitingly tense, although the positional stances of the primary players by the film’s end aren’t entirely convincing.
As with Falling Down, the protagonist is a sympathetic character, even in her blackened moral reasoning, yet The Brave One, unlike the aforementioned picture, offers little in way of satisfying catharsis. In its main folly, the film’s actual closure negates the ending that it seemed to be logically building to, and, quite honestly, the fact that she didn’t kill a single woman left something of a sour taste. It invites all manner of feminist readings, foremost that Erica is quite literally undoing the “evil that men do”.
The Brave One, despite its disappointing ending, still manages to ask vital questions about the origins of violence, and whether a wealth of wrongs can make a right. Jordan’s direction is at times masterful, and the performance he elicits from Foster in particular is captivating. The picture makes occasional hiccups, yet this is a solid effort from a wonderful ensemble of talent.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
Whilst the concept of a female protagonist violently avenging social injustices is a breath of fresh air, Jordan almost falls at the first hurdle in painting a portrait of happy families in soon-to-be husband and wife Erica (Jodie Foster) and David (Naveen Andrews). The idea of “tragedy strikes the perfect couple” became redundant decades ago, yet directors and writers still insist on exploiting it.
Nonetheless, the plot moves forward fairly quickly, and fortunately, for want of a better term, the idyllic paradise is soon enough usurped. In a brutal attack, David is killed, and Erica is left in a coma, and I move to applaud Jordan’s gritty and visceral filmmaking approach. Furthermore, in the subsequent hospital scenes, as the doctors race to save their lives, Jordan holds nothing back – he shows blood-smeared breasts, and does so without it appearing either gratuitous or exploitative, but simply raw.
The initial stages of the film are not free of contemplative, broodish scenes, and whilst they do hurt the pace of the film, causing it to plod along, considering how well Jordan knows the camera, and how competently shot these interludes are, they seem neither superfluous nor tiresome. Moreover, they are few and far between in this picture. It can be said as a general rule, in fact, that the film is expertly shot – the constantly rotating camera gives an ubiquitous feeling of unease, and reinforces Erica’s own trepidation about venturing back into the outside world.
There are times when The Brave One almost appears to be criminalising the police themselves, or rather, the proceduralism of their line of work. It is this concept that essentially kick-starts Erica’s rampage, but I’m pressed to consider whether the system really is to blame, as, after all, is it really feasible to levy a cost-effective replacement?
As strong as the film by-and-large is, what bothered me most in the film’s establishing scenes is how quickly and coincidentally Erica is thrown into a situation whereby she is able to utilise her gun (which she illegally purchased). It feels very contrived, yet one can almost forget this when Jordan dazzles us with a wonderful slow-motion shot of Erica’s face, moments after using her gun – it is a credit to not only Jordan and his director of photography, but to Foster as an actress, using her face to speak without voice.
It isn’t long before Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) arrives on the scene, and as is bitingly truthful of our society and our expectations of the perpetration of violence, he suspects anything other than a female shooter. The script could have simply used “they”, yet “he” is used almost exclusively until the latter portion of the film, a decidedly sharper inflexion on the part of writers Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort.
Erica never seems to assume the “badass” persona that many lesser films would have conferred upon her – one can practically feel the adrenaline rushing through her body in each violent transgression, thanks to Foster’s extraordinary physical acting. However, soon enough, one can begin to question the morality of Erica’s interactions – she knows that she shouldn’t use her gun, but she does, she’s angry. It follows very succinctly that she is disenfranchised with society, and is very wet around the ears. However, she claims that she doesn’t shake when using the gun, yet vomits after dropping two thugs – this characterisation, I must state, is thus somewhat confusing.
In Erica’s first violent outburst, we witness her covering her tracks, yet in her second, which takes place aboard a train, the fact that 99% of all train stations (and trains, no less) are now equipped with cameras is conveniently glossed over. This is one of the few indisputable logical fallacies in the film, and it bothered me, although not as much as it should have, given the veritable strength of the film as a collective.
As Detective Mercer begins to get hot on the trail of Erica, the film assumes a stance that resembles a more volatile version of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down – we are truly unsure as to where, if anywhere, Erica’s sanity lies. What the film quite daringly ventures to do is make Erica and Mercer incredibly friendly with each other, making the chance of a cop-out ending later on far less likely (although my discussion of that will come later). As Erica interviews Mercer for her radio show, the lines of morality between a citizen and a police officer very clearly become blurred – those in uniform wish to serve justice simply as we do, but it as if they become too immersed in the procedure and administrative milieu of their work that they are blinded by it.
As The Brave One progresses, Erica transforms from someone of morally dubious character to one who is more or less morally bankrupt, diverging from simply repelling would-be assailants to actively becoming a vigilante. She kills those even the police wish dead, but in her act of cleaning the streets, she is attacking those unrelated to herself. Still, I find it important to stress that she knows this – the script is self-referential in its morality, and so to deem the film “morally confused” as many in the film press have is incorrect. Her actions reflect her irrational mentality in lieu of her fiancé's death, and to judge her morality in relation to those of “normal” people is unfair.
The key point of contention for the film is an interesting moral dilemma – will Mercer, with his ever-increasing array of evidence, turn Erica in, or, with his flourishing friendship and sympathy towards her, will he let her go? The finale is nail-bitingly tense, although the positional stances of the primary players by the film’s end aren’t entirely convincing.
As with Falling Down, the protagonist is a sympathetic character, even in her blackened moral reasoning, yet The Brave One, unlike the aforementioned picture, offers little in way of satisfying catharsis. In its main folly, the film’s actual closure negates the ending that it seemed to be logically building to, and, quite honestly, the fact that she didn’t kill a single woman left something of a sour taste. It invites all manner of feminist readings, foremost that Erica is quite literally undoing the “evil that men do”.
The Brave One, despite its disappointing ending, still manages to ask vital questions about the origins of violence, and whether a wealth of wrongs can make a right. Jordan’s direction is at times masterful, and the performance he elicits from Foster in particular is captivating. The picture makes occasional hiccups, yet this is a solid effort from a wonderful ensemble of talent.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
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Neil Jordan cemented himself as a director to watch in 1992 with his highly controversial film The Crying Game, a film known for its subversion of gender roles. Jordan’s latest picture, The Brave One, seeks to repeat this pattern – it is essentially oestrogen-induced revenge fare, a Death Wish minus the testosterone, if you will, with a slight dash of Falling Down to it, also.
Whilst the concept of a female protagonist violently avenging social injustices is a breath of fresh air, Jordan almost falls at the first hurdle in painting a portrait of happy families in soon-to-be husband and wife Erica (Jodie Foster) and David (Naveen Andrews). The idea of “tragedy strikes the perfect couple” became redundant decades ago, yet directors and writers still insist on exploiting it.
Nonetheless, the plot moves forward fairly quickly, and fortunately, for want of a better term, the idyllic paradise is soon enough usurped. In a brutal attack, David is killed, and Erica is left in a coma, and I move to applaud Jordan’s gritty and visceral filmmaking approach. Furthermore, in the subsequent hospital scenes, as the doctors race to save their lives, Jordan holds nothing back – he shows blood-smeared breasts, and does so without it appearing either gratuitous or exploitative, but simply raw.
The initial stages of the film are not free of contemplative, broodish scenes, and whilst they do hurt the pace of the film, causing it to plod along, considering how well Jordan knows the camera, and how competently shot these interludes are, they seem neither superfluous nor tiresome. Moreover, they are few and far between in this picture. It can be said as a general rule, in fact, that the film is expertly shot – the constantly rotating camera gives an ubiquitous feeling of unease, and reinforces Erica’s own trepidation about venturing back into the outside world.
There are times when The Brave One almost appears to be criminalising the police themselves, or rather, the proceduralism of their line of work. It is this concept that essentially kick-starts Erica’s rampage, but I’m pressed to consider whether the system really is to blame, as, after all, is it really feasible to levy a cost-effective replacement?
As strong as the film by-and-large is, what bothered me most in the film’s establishing scenes is how quickly and coincidentally Erica is thrown into a situation whereby she is able to utilise her gun (which she illegally purchased). It feels very contrived, yet one can almost forget this when Jordan dazzles us with a wonderful slow-motion shot of Erica’s face, moments after using her gun – it is a credit to not only Jordan and his director of photography, but to Foster as an actress, using her face to speak without voice.
It isn’t long before Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) arrives on the scene, and as is bitingly truthful of our society and our expectations of the perpetration of violence, he suspects anything other than a female shooter. The script could have simply used “they”, yet “he” is used almost exclusively until the latter portion of the film, a decidedly sharper inflexion on the part of writers Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort.
Erica never seems to assume the “badass” persona that many lesser films would have conferred upon her – one can practically feel the adrenaline rushing through her body in each violent transgression, thanks to Foster’s extraordinary physical acting. However, soon enough, one can begin to question the morality of Erica’s interactions – she knows that she shouldn’t use her gun, but she does, she’s angry. It follows very succinctly that she is disenfranchised with society, and is very wet around the ears. However, she claims that she doesn’t shake when using the gun, yet vomits after dropping two thugs – this characterisation, I must state, is thus somewhat confusing.
In Erica’s first violent outburst, we witness her covering her tracks, yet in her second, which takes place aboard a train, the fact that 99% of all train stations (and trains, no less) are now equipped with cameras is conveniently glossed over. This is one of the few indisputable logical fallacies in the film, and it bothered me, although not as much as it should have, given the veritable strength of the film as a collective.
As Detective Mercer begins to get hot on the trail of Erica, the film assumes a stance that resembles a more volatile version of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down – we are truly unsure as to where, if anywhere, Erica’s sanity lies. What the film quite daringly ventures to do is make Erica and Mercer incredibly friendly with each other, making the chance of a cop-out ending later on far less likely (although my discussion of that will come later). As Erica interviews Mercer for her radio show, the lines of morality between a citizen and a police officer very clearly become blurred – those in uniform wish to serve justice simply as we do, but it as if they become too immersed in the procedure and administrative milieu of their work that they are blinded by it.
As The Brave One progresses, Erica transforms from someone of morally dubious character to one who is more or less morally bankrupt, diverging from simply repelling would-be assailants to actively becoming a vigilante. She kills those even the police wish dead, but in her act of cleaning the streets, she is attacking those unrelated to herself. Still, I find it important to stress that she knows this – the script is self-referential in its morality, and so to deem the film “morally confused” as many in the film press have is incorrect. Her actions reflect her irrational mentality in lieu of her fiancé's death, and to judge her morality in relation to those of “normal” people is unfair.
The key point of contention for the film is an interesting moral dilemma – will Mercer, with his ever-increasing array of evidence, turn Erica in, or, with his flourishing friendship and sympathy towards her, will he let her go? The finale is nail-bitingly tense, although the positional stances of the primary players by the film’s end aren’t entirely convincing.
As with Falling Down, the protagonist is a sympathetic character, even in her blackened moral reasoning, yet The Brave One, unlike the aforementioned picture, offers little in way of satisfying catharsis. In its main folly, the film’s actual closure negates the ending that it seemed to be logically building to, and, quite honestly, the fact that she didn’t kill a single woman left something of a sour taste. It invites all manner of feminist readings, foremost that Erica is quite literally undoing the “evil that men do”.
The Brave One, despite its disappointing ending, still manages to ask vital questions about the origins of violence, and whether a wealth of wrongs can make a right. Jordan’s direction is at times masterful, and the performance he elicits from Foster in particular is captivating. The picture makes occasional hiccups, yet this is a solid effort from a wonderful ensemble of talent.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
Whilst the concept of a female protagonist violently avenging social injustices is a breath of fresh air, Jordan almost falls at the first hurdle in painting a portrait of happy families in soon-to-be husband and wife Erica (Jodie Foster) and David (Naveen Andrews). The idea of “tragedy strikes the perfect couple” became redundant decades ago, yet directors and writers still insist on exploiting it.
Nonetheless, the plot moves forward fairly quickly, and fortunately, for want of a better term, the idyllic paradise is soon enough usurped. In a brutal attack, David is killed, and Erica is left in a coma, and I move to applaud Jordan’s gritty and visceral filmmaking approach. Furthermore, in the subsequent hospital scenes, as the doctors race to save their lives, Jordan holds nothing back – he shows blood-smeared breasts, and does so without it appearing either gratuitous or exploitative, but simply raw.
The initial stages of the film are not free of contemplative, broodish scenes, and whilst they do hurt the pace of the film, causing it to plod along, considering how well Jordan knows the camera, and how competently shot these interludes are, they seem neither superfluous nor tiresome. Moreover, they are few and far between in this picture. It can be said as a general rule, in fact, that the film is expertly shot – the constantly rotating camera gives an ubiquitous feeling of unease, and reinforces Erica’s own trepidation about venturing back into the outside world.
There are times when The Brave One almost appears to be criminalising the police themselves, or rather, the proceduralism of their line of work. It is this concept that essentially kick-starts Erica’s rampage, but I’m pressed to consider whether the system really is to blame, as, after all, is it really feasible to levy a cost-effective replacement?
As strong as the film by-and-large is, what bothered me most in the film’s establishing scenes is how quickly and coincidentally Erica is thrown into a situation whereby she is able to utilise her gun (which she illegally purchased). It feels very contrived, yet one can almost forget this when Jordan dazzles us with a wonderful slow-motion shot of Erica’s face, moments after using her gun – it is a credit to not only Jordan and his director of photography, but to Foster as an actress, using her face to speak without voice.
It isn’t long before Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) arrives on the scene, and as is bitingly truthful of our society and our expectations of the perpetration of violence, he suspects anything other than a female shooter. The script could have simply used “they”, yet “he” is used almost exclusively until the latter portion of the film, a decidedly sharper inflexion on the part of writers Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort.
Erica never seems to assume the “badass” persona that many lesser films would have conferred upon her – one can practically feel the adrenaline rushing through her body in each violent transgression, thanks to Foster’s extraordinary physical acting. However, soon enough, one can begin to question the morality of Erica’s interactions – she knows that she shouldn’t use her gun, but she does, she’s angry. It follows very succinctly that she is disenfranchised with society, and is very wet around the ears. However, she claims that she doesn’t shake when using the gun, yet vomits after dropping two thugs – this characterisation, I must state, is thus somewhat confusing.
In Erica’s first violent outburst, we witness her covering her tracks, yet in her second, which takes place aboard a train, the fact that 99% of all train stations (and trains, no less) are now equipped with cameras is conveniently glossed over. This is one of the few indisputable logical fallacies in the film, and it bothered me, although not as much as it should have, given the veritable strength of the film as a collective.
As Detective Mercer begins to get hot on the trail of Erica, the film assumes a stance that resembles a more volatile version of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down – we are truly unsure as to where, if anywhere, Erica’s sanity lies. What the film quite daringly ventures to do is make Erica and Mercer incredibly friendly with each other, making the chance of a cop-out ending later on far less likely (although my discussion of that will come later). As Erica interviews Mercer for her radio show, the lines of morality between a citizen and a police officer very clearly become blurred – those in uniform wish to serve justice simply as we do, but it as if they become too immersed in the procedure and administrative milieu of their work that they are blinded by it.
As The Brave One progresses, Erica transforms from someone of morally dubious character to one who is more or less morally bankrupt, diverging from simply repelling would-be assailants to actively becoming a vigilante. She kills those even the police wish dead, but in her act of cleaning the streets, she is attacking those unrelated to herself. Still, I find it important to stress that she knows this – the script is self-referential in its morality, and so to deem the film “morally confused” as many in the film press have is incorrect. Her actions reflect her irrational mentality in lieu of her fiancé's death, and to judge her morality in relation to those of “normal” people is unfair.
The key point of contention for the film is an interesting moral dilemma – will Mercer, with his ever-increasing array of evidence, turn Erica in, or, with his flourishing friendship and sympathy towards her, will he let her go? The finale is nail-bitingly tense, although the positional stances of the primary players by the film’s end aren’t entirely convincing.
As with Falling Down, the protagonist is a sympathetic character, even in her blackened moral reasoning, yet The Brave One, unlike the aforementioned picture, offers little in way of satisfying catharsis. In its main folly, the film’s actual closure negates the ending that it seemed to be logically building to, and, quite honestly, the fact that she didn’t kill a single woman left something of a sour taste. It invites all manner of feminist readings, foremost that Erica is quite literally undoing the “evil that men do”.
The Brave One, despite its disappointing ending, still manages to ask vital questions about the origins of violence, and whether a wealth of wrongs can make a right. Jordan’s direction is at times masterful, and the performance he elicits from Foster in particular is captivating. The picture makes occasional hiccups, yet this is a solid effort from a wonderful ensemble of talent.
Thanks for reading,
Reefer