Rating of
3/4
The Brave One a 9/11 Vigilante Allegory?
efrain - wrote on 11/14/07
“The Brave One” starring Jodie Foster (“The Silence of the Lambs”) is a drama that will keep you thinking long after the movie ends.
Foster is excellent as Erica Bain, a happy New York radio host, who after a brutal attack leaves her tragically wounded and her fiancé dead, changes from a paranoid victim into a relentless eye-for-an-eye vigilante. While an NYPD detective (the always cool Terrence Howard, “Crash”) is hot on her trail, Erica begins to lose herself in bitter grief and the urge to retaliate.
Even as she’s picking up the pieces of her shattered life, she is fierce, fragile, and blinded by revenge, stalking the “bad guys” on her own terms. It’s hard to imagine another actor in Foster’s role, portraying that perfect blend of strength, vulnerability and poise at the brink of insanity.
I loved this movie but I’m puzzled over whether or not I saw something that wasn’t there. Is “The Brave One” an allegory of the U.S. before, on, and after the tragedy in 2001? Is it simply a morally ambiguous portrait of a battered woman’s revenge within the confines of the tidy tagline: How many wrongs to make it right?
As post-9/11 paranoia targeted people of color, is it merely Hollywood stereotyping when the source of Erica’s paranoia and focus of revenge is represented by evildoers portrayed by minorities? Is it coincidence that her fiancé is played by Naveen Andrews, an actor known for playing an Iraqi on TV (“LOST”)?
As in “Reign Over Me”, another 9/11-centric film, the city of New York is not only the setting of the story, but a character as well. Erica’s beloved, fading city mirrors her life. As she mentions after the attack in the movie, Erica’s memories of her fiancé, her home and her old life dissipate, and so dissolves her self into a fearful, vengeful stranger. Now no matter how hard she tries, how hard America tries, she can’t go back to who she used to be.
Maybe it’s the memorials on TV, or maybe because I was born on that date, but I can’t help to think Jodie Foster has given us an Oscar-worthy performance as a traumatized, fragile, and headstrong America still quietly seething with vengeance in the shadow of 9/11.
