John's Movie Musings

Ugh. Another stupid revenge flick.

Remember those Death Wish movies with Charles Bronson? Something bad would happen to Bronson's family and he'd go all medieval on the bad guys and by the end, sunbeams and rainbows would fill the sky. The Brave One is Death Wish with Jodie Foster as Charles Bronson. No, not instead of Bronson, as Bronson. Seriously.

The family member in question is Sayid from LOST. So as to seem more helpless than Jodie Foster, Sayid is stripped of all his badassery. That's disappointing and completely unbelievable. True, it's not fair to typecast an actor, but if you see this (ha), let me know if you don't think the same thing.

But the real palm-to-forehead moment comes at the end. Revenge flicks live or die solely on their ending. They naturally build up a tension that must be resolved intelligently at the end. If that doesn't happen, you yell at the screen. Or at least I do. Here, when the final scene appeared, a giant FAIL stamp should have hit the screen. The Brave One makes the tragic flaw of making the characters do something completely unnatural just to wrap things up. It's sad.

What makes the ending so frustrating is that the rest of the movie is brilliantly acted. We all know Jodie can act and we get Terrance Howard playing the detective. The scenes they have together are great. But trust me, this ain't worth sitting through to see 'em.

There are plenty of other flaws. The way she gets her gun comes straight from the Convenient Conflict Resolution Handbook (2nd Ed.). Jodie also plays a NPR-like talk show host. Talk Radio is boring on its own. In a crappy revenge flick, it's torture.

Spare yourself the pain and skip this one.

Grade: D