Jodie Foster owns The Brave One."" Stalking through the streets of New York City, she portrays Erica Bain's transition from nostalgic radio personality to insomniac vigilante with such skill that Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud.
When Bain and her fiancé (played by ""Lost's"" Naveen Andrews) are brutally beaten in the beginning of the movie, one of the thugs records the event with a phone or small digital camera. This repugnant oddity of recording such violence is significant. Throughout the film, the violence Bain encounters is chronicled by means of security cameras, her radio recording device and even physical scars.
Each misdeed is permanent and real. Bain walks the streets with sounds of gunshots and brutality echoing so loudly the normal ambience of her surroundings can no longer be heard. In addition, the music adds little to the movie. The score could have easily been named ""Generic dramatic music to heighten intensity."" An amateur could have created a more scintillating score on Apple's Garageband.
The violence in this movie is provocative and personal. This is not an action movie that seeks to glorify violence. The cinematography captures the intimacy of each bullet shot by zooming in on both victim and killer. Bain does not celebrate after shooting someone. Instead, she takes a shower, washes her hands and vomits.
Terrence Howard plays Bain's counterpart. The character, Detective Mercer - with wounds still fresh from divorce - compliments Bain's character well, yet Howard comes off too childlike for viewers to believe he is a hardened detective. It is hard to imagine New York's finest exemplifying as much control as a fish flopping about hopelessly in the sharp, glassy remains of its broken bowl.
The make-up and wardrobe crews deserve an accolade. In the beginning of the film Bain confidently wears little to no make-up and sports a casual, free-spirited style of dress. Gradually Bain masks her identity, first with sunglasses, then dark make-up, and to complete the look she wears mostly black, the New York color of choice.
A particularly chilling shot that illustrates these changes shows Foster standing under a bridge with her recording equipment (she uses real ""New York"" sound bites in her radio show) wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses, leaning against a chain-link fence. Her body language in this scene can only be described as menacing.
Closely cropped shots occupy much of the film's scenes suggesting that although Bain may be living in ""the safest big city in the world"" she is indeed in her own world; a world becoming more and more saturated with rage and violence in every passing moment.
The best shot is at the end of the movie, which looks down from a rooftop at Foster racing through a maze-like apartment complex. She staggers and retraces her steps finally reaching the street. Perhaps she is running away from the person she has become, or maybe she is ultimately departing from the person she once was. It is left unclear whether or not she will find the lid to Pandora's box.
