The Brave One

*** Stars

The Brave one is an excruciatingly difficult film to watch. I saw this on a Sunday afternoon and lets say I ended the weekend on a rather strange note. However, Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard are two great actors at the top of their game in this brutal drama about one woman who loses herself throughout the entire film.

Erica Bain (Foster) is getting married. She is madly in love with him. Now of course in a drama like this, even if you haven't seen the trailer, you know that things can't end happy. So what happens next? Her and her loving fiance are brutally attacked, leaving Erica badly wounded and her fiancé dead.

When she recovers, she doesn't leave her apartment because she is afraid of the outside world. After a long time in solitude, she hits the streets again, but buys a gun in the process. She begins to prowl the streets at night, putting justice to those who are responsible for her beating. This puts her on a violent killing spree, one she may never get out of. She befriends a NYPD detective (Terrence Howard) who is on her case. He is unaware that Erica is actually the one committing these acts.

Director Neil Gordan (Breakfast on Pluto) executes stunning camera work here, giving us a haunted tale of brutality and a vast emptiness. The movie is fast paced and extremely interesting to watch. The plot however, goes from confusing, to convoluted, to insane. Still, this is such an interesting character study with such great performances from the two leads, that they dig a hole you won't be able to crawl out from.