From the NY Times:
[quote]On These Mean Streets, Going a Little Travis Bickle
By CHARLES McGRATH
In her last movie, Spike Lee's “Inside Man,â€
The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
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Antoine Doinel
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Antoine Doinel
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Here's the trailer.
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flyonthewall2983
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flyonthewall2983
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It's up on Yahoo, and in HD.
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DrewReiber
- Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:27 am
Does anyone know how much of an influence Ms. 45 might have had on the film? I read sometime ago that Foster tried to get the remake rights, but the deal didn't happen. They've been talking about Taxi Driver a lot in promoting the movie, but the descriptions still sound a lot like they're channelling Ferrara as well.
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Antoine Doinel
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flyonthewall2983
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Jean-Luc Garbo
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At least they hired a terrific DP.
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Jean-Luc Garbo
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patrick
- Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:15 pm
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I just watched the trailer for this (on the 300 DVD) and while it certainly looks better than I expected, it still didn't interest me that much. However, the premise of an exploration of a Bernhard Goetz-esque person who gets away and keeps committing vigilante acts (at least that's what I got out of the trailer) is interesting enough - hopefully the script stays away from too much cat-and-mouse stuff between Foster and Howard.
I can't see any evidence of this being a Neil Jordan film from the trailer, but then again there are a few of his films I could say that about.
I can't see any evidence of this being a Neil Jordan film from the trailer, but then again there are a few of his films I could say that about.
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flyonthewall2983
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New Trailer. This one is more interesting in comparison to the other one, because it doesn't really paint the Foster character as much a hero as the first one did.
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Antoine Doinel
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The new trailer reminds me of Michael Douglas' mid-90s vigilante film, Falling Down. I'm intrigued, but right now it looks like the film could go either way. I still think the film paints Foster as a hero, particularly the subway sequence where she blows away those Evil Black Hip Hop Guys. I just hope the rest of the film doesn't paint her victims in such garish stereotypes.
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Antoine Doinel
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colinr0380
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Re: The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, especially when I wasn't greatly fond of the film itself (though there were a couple of interesting aspects), but this was just shown on television last night and I thought I would add some of my thoughts.
I'm not a very big fan of these kind of vigilante thrillers, which often feel rather unbalanced in their in-depth exploration of their lead character's psyches while at the same time turning the various thugs they mow down into cartoonish stereotypes. The Brave One doesn't manage to avoid this problem - if I'm being uncharitable the message appears to be that now that white men have abdicated their responsibilties for patrolling the urban environment that white women and domesticated black people have to learn to join forces to battle black thugs and latinos in general (with Asian Americans supplying the weaponary) - but there is an interesting ambiguity to the main character that at least kept my interest.
The opening fifteen minutes or so is almost parodical in the way Foster skips through the city without a care often directly into traffic without looking both ways, often wearing all white (symbolism!), until the almost Irreversible-style ominous Central Park tunnel where she and her boyfriend get assaulted (after watching this and Birth I now feel that everyone should steer clear of walking through Central Park tunnels - you either have your dog stolen and get beaten, or have a fatal heart attack!)
Following the recovery there is an interesting section where Foster is now much more conscious about her environment and the dangers in it. This seems to be momentarily moving into territory explored in Copycat of perhaps the main character locking themselves away, but instead this film is more about a more worrying idea of trying to regain 'ownership' over an area that you once felt safe and secure in - which in this film takes the form of blasting away thugs after almost masochistically putting yourself into situations where you get threatened and abused.
One of the most conservative ideas of the film, but also the one that keeps the plot mechanics ticking own beyond the vigilantism, is the distrust of the media. It reminded me a little of that Robert De Niro thriller 15 Minutes, which made its condemnation of video technology much more explicit, but also the way that the Foster character, a talk radio host/journalist, is shown wandering around the city recording ambient city noises felt vaguely reminiscent of Blow Out too.
The way that Foster seems to be trying to 'take back' the city by recording and listening back to tapes of street noises becomes the way that she is later able to re-experience her vigilante encounters. There seems to be an underlying idea that recordable media is something evil, since it keeps a person trapped in a cycle of re-experiencing past moments over and over, when if those moments were not captured the person would be able to move on and in some ways recover from their grief (the retrieved ring later on is a more classical example of this reviving old memories of the shattered relationship, and which gets used as the key to being able to track down and confront the thugs again), something which gets made much more literal in the final 'gifting' to Foster of the mobile phone footage of the assault as a last push to the ultimate confrontation with the gang.
Perhaps the most interesting element is the way that the Foster character is almost begging at times to be stopped - her vigilante actions don't appear to be helping her come to terms with anything at all. This begging tone intersects with the usual idea of the police investigating the crimes and the old idea of whether you need to stay within the boundaries of the law, or whether you need to step outside and commit extra-judicial actions, along with the question of whether the burgeoning relationship between Foster and Terrence Howard as the investigator will prevail over the need to bring her to justice for her own crimes.
I suppose that if a relative or a friend were killed that it would probably be understandable to howl for some kind of vengeance, but one of the reasons for a rigid structure of consensual laws is to allow for such grief to be expressed but then to prevent that natural outpouring from overruling the structure of society itself (It also protects the individual in grief, allowing them to give full reign to emotional, "hang 'em all" reactions while knowing that such statements will not be taken seriously). Something may be terrible on a personal level but on a wider one short term grief cannot be allowed to dictate the way that things function, otherwise things totally fall apart under lobbying from every quarter for their own specific causes and changes to laws undertaken on a whim (or in response to a media campaign) to follow perceived public opinion.
The Brave One does tackle this idea in an interesting manner, as Foster's ambivalence towards what she is doing, and wish for someone to actually stop her, because she cannot stop herself, goes unanswered. Instead she constantly gets an implicit signal to carry on - the vigilante becomes a media celebrity, a victim of an assault who saw Foster obviously lies and says no one else was there, and even Howard talks about the way that the law cannot touch obvious criminals who are too powerful.
I'm not a very big fan of these kind of vigilante thrillers, which often feel rather unbalanced in their in-depth exploration of their lead character's psyches while at the same time turning the various thugs they mow down into cartoonish stereotypes. The Brave One doesn't manage to avoid this problem - if I'm being uncharitable the message appears to be that now that white men have abdicated their responsibilties for patrolling the urban environment that white women and domesticated black people have to learn to join forces to battle black thugs and latinos in general (with Asian Americans supplying the weaponary) - but there is an interesting ambiguity to the main character that at least kept my interest.
The opening fifteen minutes or so is almost parodical in the way Foster skips through the city without a care often directly into traffic without looking both ways, often wearing all white (symbolism!), until the almost Irreversible-style ominous Central Park tunnel where she and her boyfriend get assaulted (after watching this and Birth I now feel that everyone should steer clear of walking through Central Park tunnels - you either have your dog stolen and get beaten, or have a fatal heart attack!)
Following the recovery there is an interesting section where Foster is now much more conscious about her environment and the dangers in it. This seems to be momentarily moving into territory explored in Copycat of perhaps the main character locking themselves away, but instead this film is more about a more worrying idea of trying to regain 'ownership' over an area that you once felt safe and secure in - which in this film takes the form of blasting away thugs after almost masochistically putting yourself into situations where you get threatened and abused.
One of the most conservative ideas of the film, but also the one that keeps the plot mechanics ticking own beyond the vigilantism, is the distrust of the media. It reminded me a little of that Robert De Niro thriller 15 Minutes, which made its condemnation of video technology much more explicit, but also the way that the Foster character, a talk radio host/journalist, is shown wandering around the city recording ambient city noises felt vaguely reminiscent of Blow Out too.
The way that Foster seems to be trying to 'take back' the city by recording and listening back to tapes of street noises becomes the way that she is later able to re-experience her vigilante encounters. There seems to be an underlying idea that recordable media is something evil, since it keeps a person trapped in a cycle of re-experiencing past moments over and over, when if those moments were not captured the person would be able to move on and in some ways recover from their grief (the retrieved ring later on is a more classical example of this reviving old memories of the shattered relationship, and which gets used as the key to being able to track down and confront the thugs again), something which gets made much more literal in the final 'gifting' to Foster of the mobile phone footage of the assault as a last push to the ultimate confrontation with the gang.
Perhaps the most interesting element is the way that the Foster character is almost begging at times to be stopped - her vigilante actions don't appear to be helping her come to terms with anything at all. This begging tone intersects with the usual idea of the police investigating the crimes and the old idea of whether you need to stay within the boundaries of the law, or whether you need to step outside and commit extra-judicial actions, along with the question of whether the burgeoning relationship between Foster and Terrence Howard as the investigator will prevail over the need to bring her to justice for her own crimes.
I suppose that if a relative or a friend were killed that it would probably be understandable to howl for some kind of vengeance, but one of the reasons for a rigid structure of consensual laws is to allow for such grief to be expressed but then to prevent that natural outpouring from overruling the structure of society itself (It also protects the individual in grief, allowing them to give full reign to emotional, "hang 'em all" reactions while knowing that such statements will not be taken seriously). Something may be terrible on a personal level but on a wider one short term grief cannot be allowed to dictate the way that things function, otherwise things totally fall apart under lobbying from every quarter for their own specific causes and changes to laws undertaken on a whim (or in response to a media campaign) to follow perceived public opinion.
The Brave One does tackle this idea in an interesting manner, as Foster's ambivalence towards what she is doing, and wish for someone to actually stop her, because she cannot stop herself, goes unanswered. Instead she constantly gets an implicit signal to carry on - the vigilante becomes a media celebrity, a victim of an assault who saw Foster obviously lies and says no one else was there, and even Howard talks about the way that the law cannot touch obvious criminals who are too powerful.
Spoiler
That comes to a head in the final confrontation Foster has with the thug who assaulted her, when Howard stops her (Finally!), only to give her his own gun to shoot the thug with because it will be untraceable (D'oh!)
Now I don't know whether I am reading too much into the above because I was looking for an interesting angle to the film, but I assume that this 'happy' ending was the worst possible one for Foster's character. She has been given a mandate now, almost a legitimisation that what she did was right and correct, if not entirely lawful, and the people that she has looked to for help and support, to keep the walls of law (and sanity) erect and to tell her that she is doing the wrong thing, have all fallen short.
Will she now be forced to continue in the same masochistic role? It seems unlikely that she can return back to a normal life, but what happens when the decision of whether you want to be the next Batman or not is taken out of your hands?
She is left in the awful/ironic position that none of the actions have returned her to her previous life, and none of them have made her feel better, only exposed the moral relativity (and blood lust) of the wider world to her. Which leads to a strange American Psycho-esque ending to the film of someone who finds themselves in the position of screaming their guilt at a world that doesn't want to listen.
Now I don't know whether I am reading too much into the above because I was looking for an interesting angle to the film, but I assume that this 'happy' ending was the worst possible one for Foster's character. She has been given a mandate now, almost a legitimisation that what she did was right and correct, if not entirely lawful, and the people that she has looked to for help and support, to keep the walls of law (and sanity) erect and to tell her that she is doing the wrong thing, have all fallen short.
Will she now be forced to continue in the same masochistic role? It seems unlikely that she can return back to a normal life, but what happens when the decision of whether you want to be the next Batman or not is taken out of your hands?
She is left in the awful/ironic position that none of the actions have returned her to her previous life, and none of them have made her feel better, only exposed the moral relativity (and blood lust) of the wider world to her. Which leads to a strange American Psycho-esque ending to the film of someone who finds themselves in the position of screaming their guilt at a world that doesn't want to listen.
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knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 10:49 pm
Re: The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
Great write up, you perfectly expressed the feelings I had after watching the film.Though my reaction may have been rendered more extreme because when I saw it with a friend who had the exact opposite reaction to the ending, though that may have been her crush on Foster speaking.
Spoiler
I found the ending not only to be a hellish trap for Foster, but also the most offensive ending they could go with. By having the law and moral center of the film endorse her they were in fact endorsing that sort of vigilantism. As goofy or bad as other Goetz thrillers I've seen are they at least pay lip service against such a full endorsement. That for me renders this otherwise harmless and generic Foster vehicle into something that is sickening.
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:30 pm
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Re: The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
I am beginning to think that there is a kind of crassness, or coarsening, that undermines many of Neil Jordan's films, which is problematic because there is an obvious sensitivity to try and make events ambivalent on the indiviudal level but then a focus on a kind of climactic 'turning point' event on the wider one which seems to push a particular attitude to the characters or events of a story to the forefront. Often only the main characters are of any consequence (and only really the psychology of the main character being important at that), with the minor ones just being used as pawns.
It doesn't help that The Brave One is already in a problematic genre, but there are also lots of moments like that in The Crying Game (the rush to the toilet to vomit on uncovering the 'revelation' being the first one that comes to mind, but many of the IRA scenes are rather broad), or The Good Thief (far less subtle than Bob le Flambeur). I do like The Company of Wolves but it does have that in-your-face werewolf transformation that undermines a lot of the preceeding carefully built up ambiguity there as well! It is difficult to explain but I often feel as if I have to make allowances for this aspect of Jordan's films, sometimes even having to consciously ignore the actions occurring on the surface level to keep myself invested in the film, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't! I'm still not entirely sure whether this tone is something intentional by the filmmakers or not!
It doesn't help that The Brave One is already in a problematic genre, but there are also lots of moments like that in The Crying Game (the rush to the toilet to vomit on uncovering the 'revelation' being the first one that comes to mind, but many of the IRA scenes are rather broad), or The Good Thief (far less subtle than Bob le Flambeur). I do like The Company of Wolves but it does have that in-your-face werewolf transformation that undermines a lot of the preceeding carefully built up ambiguity there as well! It is difficult to explain but I often feel as if I have to make allowances for this aspect of Jordan's films, sometimes even having to consciously ignore the actions occurring on the surface level to keep myself invested in the film, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't! I'm still not entirely sure whether this tone is something intentional by the filmmakers or not!
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jbeall
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Re: The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
Interesting discussion. I found the ending appalling because
Spoiler
frankly, you don't just get revenge and suddenly feel better. There are two moments at the end of the film that piss me off. The first is when her hand begins to shake once she has to wound Terrence Howard, and the second is when she walks with her dog through the same tunnel where she was assaulted. Now that's she's killed the thugs, she can lose the emotional trauma? On the one hand, the shaking hand implies that she's gone back to the way she was prior to the assault. Just get revenge and it's as if the horrible event, in which your boyfriend was killed, never happened, at least in terms of your psyche. What a load of hooey. It's pure wish-fulfillment. So then her walking back through the tunnel, sans firearm, takes her out of the frame of the movie, none the worse for wear, having learned nothing.
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colinr0380
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Re: The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007)
I agree, and also the point at which the film finishes is particularly frustrating since for me the most interesting aspect is still to come - how will the relationship between Howard and Foster continue? Will he become her Commissioner Gordon, giving her 'jobs' to undertake over the breakfast table and dressing her wounds in secret every evening? What happens if she one day gets fed up with having a relationship containing undercurrents of coercion and maybe even a threat of mutual blackmail should things break down between them?
I suppose that as long as she doesn't re-watch that video of the assault or re-listen to any of her tape recordings then she should be fine! Although if she has now been forced down the road of becoming a vigilante by society then perhaps she might need to keep her records close by for a repeat viewing in order to amp her up emotionally for retributative violence - becoming a Memento-esque vigilante (without the memory problem) constantly seeking revenge for a crime that she avenged a long time before.
(Both of those ideas seem far more interesting twists on the tale than the pat and relatively offensive ending which we get left with!)
I suppose that as long as she doesn't re-watch that video of the assault or re-listen to any of her tape recordings then she should be fine! Although if she has now been forced down the road of becoming a vigilante by society then perhaps she might need to keep her records close by for a repeat viewing in order to amp her up emotionally for retributative violence - becoming a Memento-esque vigilante (without the memory problem) constantly seeking revenge for a crime that she avenged a long time before.
(Both of those ideas seem far more interesting twists on the tale than the pat and relatively offensive ending which we get left with!)