Movie: “The Brave One”

This is the story of Erica Bain, a woman who has a radio program in one of the radio stations in New York called the “Street Walk”. The streets of New York during daytime and nightime becomes her home and livelihood as he tapes/records the sounds in every city street she observes. She plays these “sound bites” in her radio program with her observations, insights, analysis and explanations. She plays good music too in her program.

Her life changed when her boyfriend died, her dog stolen, and herself nearly died and hospitalized for weeks after she and boyfriend were “ambushed” and physicaly beaten by muggers and thugs in a park. The physical beatings to her boyfriend and herself were recorded by the muggers. After getting out alive and recovered from the hospital, she feels fear, suffocation, and anger in every step she takes. The city streets that she once lived, loved and gave her comfort and “income” became a “stranger” and life-threatening. She has the fear that anytime her experience will be done to her again and it will mean her death.

This gives her the idea to arm herself with a handgun but she could not wait any day to buy one. Through illegal means, she was able to buy a gun and arm herself in her nightly walks around the city.

Slowly, she became good in shooting “scumbags” and “trouble-makers” in order to protect herself from being killed/mugged/disturbed. Later, it became self-fufilling for her to be helping people who are in trouble and making herself as the celebrated and popular “vigilante” on the streets and comfortably putting justice into her hands. As she becomes comfortable with her “vigilante” life, she wanted a revenge for the crime of her boyfriend and reclaim the life that was taken from her.

Having seen this movie, I can recall the movie ” Taxi Driver” in 1976 which was directed by Martin Scorsese. Robert de Niro played the character of Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle, 26 years old, loner and driving a yellow taxi during nighttime to solve his insomnia. He was later exposed to the low-lives, scumbags, syndicates, prostitutions, corruption and other social problems along the streets of New York. He even said “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets”. He thought of nasty things to become popular including an assassination attempt to a Senator and helping persuade a young/child prostitute Iris to leave her pimp and return to her parents and school but he was frustrated. By arming himself with lots of handguns, he became a hero for saving the life of the young prostitute Iris from being exploited  by the prostitution syndicate. Surprisingly, the young prositute was portrayed by the young Jodie Foster then. 

To me, “The Brave One” is the best movie that I have seen for the year 2007. I am not surprised if Jodie Foster will win the Oscar Award for Best Actress in this movie.