The Brave One is somewhat difficult to discuss. Jodie Foster, as usual, does an excellent, measured performance. As for director Neil Jordan, his work-for-hire is never as good as his more personal films like The Crying Game or Mona Lisa. Still, The Brave One is, for me a more watchable film than The Good Thief, a weak remake of the eternally hip French classic Bob le Flambeur.The film is about a woman, a spoken word radio artist, who survives the mugging that left her fiance dead. Uncertain about the prospects of random violence in her life, she buys a gun, theoretically for self-protection. Foster finds herself in a couple of situations where she uses the gun in self defense. It is after these incidences that Foster finds herself actually looking for trouble. The film explores Foster’s moral conundrum to a certain extent, yet seems to weasel out of some uneasy questions about law and ethics.There are some interesting filmmaking choices, such as having the camera tilt on its axis to indicate the shaky emotional ground that Foster’s character treads. Also there is the use of montage, a concept most contemporary filmmakers seem to have forgotten, with shots cutting back and forth from past to present, most notably with a series of shots of Foster and Naveen Andrews being treated by emergency doctors, their clothes cut open to treat their wounds, with shots of Foster and Andrews making love, with clothes lovingly removed. Any comparisons to Death Wish are superficial, as The Brave One is both a better made film, and one that attempts to address some of its self-contradictions.

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