Movie Review: The Brave One

Long ago and what may seem far away to some, NYC was a very dangerous place. During the late 70’s and early 80’s New York City subways, streets, and neighborhoods during the day or at night, could get you robbed, raped or killed just as easily as not. Times have changed and the city is a bit safer, but if you don’t watch yourself, it still can happen.

The days of such dangers being just a walk into the subway away, are 0ver, but they spawned a whole revolution in urban crime fighting. The likes of the “Guardian Angels” and of course the case of “Bernie Goetz” showed just how fed up the populace had become to the crime rate and the poor police showing in resolving, never mind preventing these crimes. They were the times when the word “Vigilante” came to mean more to the common man.

I have lived in Manhattan and admit, there were a couple times when I thought “this is it, gonna get shot or stabbed” but, luckily for me it did not happen. Now post 9/11, New York seems, at least to me, to be a bit more friendly a place and certainly safer from the prospective of regular crime. Terrorism, well, that still is a heightened threat.

So it was that this film started and I thought, really, I just haven’t felt that unsafe in New York for a while. As the film progressed though, it became clear that Erica Bain had become the next generation to take on the mantle of “vigilante”, like that of Bernie Goetz or even Batman. She inadvertently became a statistic to some, but for her it was her life. A life that was shattered more than just body, but also psyche.

She simply became the personification of what everyone wronged in this way wishes they might be. Able to clear those demons by removing them from society when the police and the law could not.

The film plays on this feeling that we all cam empathize with and Jodi Foster plays it so tightly that you can genuinely feel the anguish over everything that has happened to her as well as what she has gone on to do to those, and those like them, that destroyed her life.

I hadn’t gone into this film thinking I would like it as much as I did. Of course now I am going to go to Manhattan again and feel that old edgy feeling that it gave me back in the 80’s…

If you get a chance, see the film.

CoB