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88Where did Hollywood get the conviction that audiences demand an ending that lets them off the hook? Foster doesn't let herself off the hook in The Brave One, and we should be as brave as she is.
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88Not since "The Crying Game" has Jordan crafted as compelling a motion picture.
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88An intense New York-set thriller that manages to be both commercial and contemplative, kick-ass and quietly, disturbingly insinuating.
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83The moody tone and carefully balanced drama turn a grubby premise into something unexpectedly elegant.
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75The Brave One is "Death Wish" with a guilty conscience, and while it may be a bit of a hypocrite as vigilante thrillers go, the internal contradictions of the thing make for a very interesting picture.
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75The way-too-neat ending of The Brave One especially strains credulity, but it's worth watching for Foster's fiercely arresting performance.
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70A vigilante drama boasting a powerful Jodie Foster performance and carefully weighted direction by Neil Jordan.
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70There's a lot to admire in The Brave One. It just doesn't cut as deeply as it needs to.
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Taken literally, almost everything that follows in The Brave One so seriously strains credibility (even by the standards of the genre) as to enter the realm of the absurd. Taken on the level of a menacing urban fairy tale, however--something akin to what Jane Campion was aiming for with "In the Cut"--it's strangely fascinating.
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70It's hard to hate, because as a rabble-rouser it is superbly effective, driven forward by two powerhouse actors.
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67A confounding movie on many levels. For all its sophistication and sensitivity, it turns out to be little more than an upscale B-movie about getting even.
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With The Brave One, Jodie Foster and director Neil Jordan shift the genre to the murky left, where right and wrong are not so black and white. In doing so, they have taken away the very thing that makes a vigilante movie work.
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63Foster is electrifying as ego and id clash and the movie fires up with genuine provocation.
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63As far as its plot mechanics go, The Brave One belongs to the hallowed (if less-than-respectable) genre of exploitative revenge pictures.
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63Not enough to overcome the proven axiom that although you can make a bad movie from a good script, you can't make a good one from a bad one.
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63Regardless of the artistry involved (though the street-level anxiety of post-9/11 New York is far better evoked in Jane Campion's underrated "In the Cut," The Brave One ultimately never really strays from the same moral low road as "Death Wish."
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63If only The Brave One had captured more of the complex nature of the fear and paranoia plaguing society since 9/11. Instead, it is a well-made but predictable take on the revenge fantasy thriller, with a female twist.
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63The movie itself isn't nearly as interesting as whatever it is Foster is trying to work out for its two hours.
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60It wants to be a modern "Taxi Driver"; it manages to be the new Falling Down, with Foster as fierce as ever.
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60Foster's pistol-packing turn as an avenging dark angel nearly sustains director Neil Jordan's grim vigilante drama through a string of implausibilities and occasionally trite psychological framing devices, with deft support from Terrence Howard as a sympathetic cop.
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58Everything about Foster's ocular intensity is riveting, but little in this hushed vigilante drama makes sense.
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58As the film builds toward a ludicrous finale, it poses a question: Foster is a far better actor than Charles Bronson, and Jordan a much better director than Michael Winner, so why is The Brave One so much less satisfying than "Death Wish"?
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50At the film's inconclusive conclusion, the filmmakers strand Erica and Sean in the moral twilight.
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50Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard are incredibly compelling and hold your attention despite Jordan's deliberately slow pacing.
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50Formulaic and creaky as a Harrison Ford action sequence, but sufficiently gussied up with good actors and a decent director so that you don't entirely mind.
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50The whole thing turns into trash with flash.
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50What might have been a serious drama about coming to terms with violence and loss turns into a crowd-pleasing and increasingly far-fetched remake of "Death Wish."
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40Foster's feminist victimization complex seems to be looping around to meet Nixon and Agnew. Next she'll be hunting Commies for the FBI.
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40Trapped in a no man's land between seriousness and pulp trash, it plays like a combination of "Death Wish" and "The Hours." If that sounds like an awkward fit, it is.
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40Don't be fooled. The Brave One, though well cast and smoothly directed, is just as crude and ugly as you want it to be.
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33The end result, at best, is high-toned pulp.
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30The drama is repetitive rather than resonant, an over-calculated, under-ventilated studio production -- even paranoid thrillers need to breathe -- whose plot machinery grinds grim and coarse.
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25The film moves from cliché to cliché and hemorrhages blood and logic at an alarming rate.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 20 out of 33
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Mixed: 7 out of 33
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Negative: 6 out of 33
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TonyB.6