The Brave One - Review

With Panic Room, Flight Plan, and now The Brave One, Jodie Foster is on the verge of becoming an action star. And odd career move for an actress on the down side of forty. If she has to get wrapped up in ass-kicking though, The Brave One is the way to do it. The movie takes a familiar genre, the vigilante revenge flick, and for a change takes it seriously. I’m not talking about the way Christopher Nolan takes Batman seriously, after all it’s still a guy in a cape running around overreacting to his parents’ death. Let’s face it, that never made a whole lot of sense. Get over it already Bats. The Brave One is an examination of what it might take for a real person to become a vigilante, an examination of what might drive a normal woman to become judge, jury, and executioner.

The normal woman in question is Erica (Foster), host of a low-rent weekend radio show in New York City and engaged to a sexy, swarthy doctor. During and evening stroll in Central Park, Erica and her fiancée are attacked by a gang of thugs. Her future husband is beaten to death, and she’s left severely injured and hospitalized. When Erica gets out, she’s not consumed by a need for revenge, but rather completely overtaken by fear. The city she’s known and loved her entire life now terrifies her. After several failed attempts she finally makes it out her front door, jumping at shadows and fighting down the constant, overwhelming urge to run home screaming. Her tragedy has left her irrevocably altered, but she’d determined not to let the fear she now feels rule her. So, as so many have before her, Erica buys a gun.

Still frightened but feeling empowered, she walks the city, fighting down her terror until tragedy strikes again. She witnesses a convenience store robbery and in an act of self-defense shoots the robber dead. It’s as if her eyes have been opened to an entirely new world. Erica faced her fears, and shot them dead. Determined never to be afraid again, Erica takes to the streets, intentionally putting herself in more and more dangerous situations as if daring the world to give her its best shot. The criminals of the city are more than happy to oblige, seeing only a seemingly defenseless white woman in a place where she probably shouldn’t be. When she attacks, Erica responds with deadly force, becoming a vigilante. With every encounter she grows more confident, but begins to wonder if she’s losing herself in the process.

Tracked by the police and hounded by her own conscience, The Brave One uses her vigilantism as a way of exploring the terrible emotional toll taken on survivors of violent crime. Whether or not Erica gets the bad guys, or whether or not the police catch her becomes much less interesting than understanding what it is that’s driven Erica to this. More than anything The Brave One is about dealing with fear and surviving in spite of it. In exploring what it’s done to Erica, Jodie Foster gives one of the best performances of her career. So does Terrence Howard as a conflicted, honest police detective who befriends her, and then ends up hunting her.

Director Neil Jordan’s carefully crafted film doesn’t have Jodie Foster swooping down from rooftops on a zip line, but it’s one of the best vigilante themed movies I’ve ever seen. The Brave One takes a fairly obvious, overused movie conceit and uses it to explore something much deeper and more real than you’d ever expect. That only serves to heighten the film’s tense, utterly believable action sequences, even if they aren’t the real focus of the script. If there’s any flaw in the movie at all, then it happens in the last five minutes when Howard’s policeman character makes an unlikely decision. His actions undermine some of the realism of the rest of the film has worked so hard to set up, but those five minutes aren’t enough to kill the smart work that came before it. Before you get all excited about the next man-in-tights superhero flick or watch Kevin Bacon shave himself bald and put on revenge-themed eye makeup for Death Sentence, make it a point to seek out The Brave One.

License to Wed - Review

Anyone who has gotten married is more than familiar with the stress that comes with the shift from being just a couple to being a married couple. Over years you discover differences of opinion on all sorts of things you never had any idea you would disagree with your spouse on: political differences, how many kids you want to have, those sorts of mundane details that just happen to come up over time. License to Wed takes those kinds of differences and has one couple face all of them over a period of days and weeks, all courtesy of a special “marriage preparation course”.

The course is conducted by the irreverent Reverend Frank, played by a slightly less energetic than usual Robin Williams. Many people told me, after seeing the trailers for License to Wed, that it looked like more of Williams doing his usual spurts of stand-up comedy. This is only partially true. While Reverend Frank does have a couple of comedic eruptions, they are kept to a minimum. One gets the sense that Williams probably didn’t control himself any more than usual on the set of this film, but the editors just kept it out of the movie. The story pairs Frank with a cute little apprentice character to give Williams someone to play off of, but it doesn’t work, particularly because the kid is too young for Williams to have too much fun with. Instead the choir boy gives off a bit of a creepy Oompa-Loompa vibe, especially when he’s stalking the designated couple and planting listening devices. By the end I was hoping someone would stuff the kid in a storage chest, never to be seen from again.

The primary humor comes from the trials of Ben (John Krasinski) and Sadie (Mandy Moore), the couple who comes to Reverend Frank for their wedding. At first a perfect couple who has never had a single fight, the duo discover their own shortcomings as they endure Frank’s marriage course. Of course, many of the couple’s problems are apparent from the start. Sadie is a big organizer and wants everything laid out in its place while Ben frequently doesn’t get his way, conceding to make his girlfriend happy. Those aren’t the problems the movie’s story really tackles however, as the marriage course pits the couple against problems most couples learn to deal with over time – communication, the rigors of having children, etc. It’s mostly manufactured problems, compressed down to a time span that creates added pressure for the characters, crumbling their relationship. One has to wonder how long the characters will put up with this, but “for the sake of the marriage” they keep at it… or that’s why Sadie puts up with it. Ben puts up with it for Sadie, and that right there shows the biggest problem the two have. Alas, it’s a problem that’s never really addressed.

Let’s be clear: this is a romantic comedy and, if there’s anything I’ve learned from romantic comedy stories over time, it’s to not expect anything bearing any similarity to reality. That’s why plot devices such as having to choose between holding a wedding three weeks away or two years away don’t even faze me anymore. A couple accepting to put up with creepy robot babies that spit up and poop as part of the marriage preparation program? Sure, why not. Ben finally getting so fed up with the program that he starts to try and dig up dirt on the minister instead of talking things over with his girlfriend? Bring it on. There is humor here, but very little of it has much to do with the actual storyline; garnering laughter from moments like Williams’s banter and Ben’s reactions to things that really are irrelevant and unbelievable. The truth is, License to Wed rivals other silly comedies like Anger Management in ludicrousness. It’s clearly a fluff movie; quite possibly the king of fluff movies in recent years. You can check your brain at the door, because the movie just tries to play on your sappy emotions with some chuckles thrown in.

The big draw for License to Wed is John Krasinski, who’s really made a name for himself as Jim in the American version of “The Office”. Director Ken Kwapis is also an “Office” alum (director for a number of episodes) and clearly wants you to remember the television series as a selling point for this movie, so the film is stuffed with cameo appearances from most of the secondary cast of the show. An appearance from Steve Carell or Rainn Wilson might have gone farther than the less memorable members of the ensemble, but you work with what you can get, I suppose. For those who want to see this cute romantic comedy because of Krasinski’s affable “Office” character, fear not. This movie is essentially an hour and a half of that same performance, minus the not-so-subtle glances at the camera. For those who don’t like Jim Halpert or don’t know “The Office”, there’s really nothing lost by missing this movie in theaters. It’s the kind of cute little comedy you might leave on the television if it happens to be on, but there’s no need to go out of your way to catch it.

No Reservations - Review

The Hollywood marketing machine has done it again. Once more the studios, having no faith in the American audience to be interested in an intelligent and witty film (and unfortunately I can’t say as I blame them), have taken a movie and advertised it as something it really isn’t. Whether you’re looking at the poster or the trailer, No Reservations comes across as the next awful, syrupy romantic comedy to be cranked out of the machine and slapped with a catchy, smarmy title. In reality there’s quite a bit more to the film than your average Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks heartstring-tugger, but the injustice doesn’t stop there.

The movie is a remake of a much better foreign film. Bella Martha, a German movie made in 2002 which was incredibly well received by critics around the world. Hollywood, ever desperate for a good idea (heaven knows they’re few and far between these days) decided it wanted in on a piece of the pie. Fearing that too many Americans are too lazy to be troubled with subtitles (and again, I’m sorry to say they’re probably right), Hollywood opted to completely redo the film. The result is a good movie, though probably only so good because the movie it copied was excellent.

Caught up in the hectic, self-absorbed life of a renowned New York chef, Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) lives for her job running the kitchen at 22 Bleeker restaurant and revels in executing it with almost painful precision. Unfortunately, a car accident claims the life of her free-spirited sister and leaves Kate to look after her orphaned niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin). In a pinch for a head chef while Kate takes some time to figure things out, the owner of 22 Bleeker hires up and coming sous-chef Nick (Aaron Eckhart), whose laid back style clashes with Kate’s uptight nature.

Despite the opportunity for painful “cooking as a metaphor for life” clichés and stereotypical romantic entanglements, the movie artfully avoids those pitfalls, replacing them with bits of clever comedy and fleeting moments of tender human emotion. What sinks the soufflé is the movie's predictable ending. It’s hard not to know exactly where the story is headed and what’s going to happen next. At least one little surprise would have been a nice treat, but instead No Reservations plays it by the book from start to finish.

Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones share a tender chemistry on screen, but I think Aaron Eckhart could probably have great chemistry with just about anyone. The guy is a genius, period. After all, Zeta-Jones hasn’t had any chemistry since burning things up with Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro. Whether or not it’s purely Eckhart’s influence, there’s some spark of new life from the actress and she manages the rare feat of breaking through the crust that seems to burden most of her roles. And then there’s Abigail Breslin. While her character is generally reduced to being the summer sun that defrosts Kate’s emotional iceberg, Breslin turns up the charm and tears and never misses a step.

Roll in a top notch score, a near perfect supporting cast, and the kind of thoughtful cinematography one would never expect from a traditional American date flick, and you end up with much more than the cheesy rom-com being touted in the previews. Director Scott Hicks brings the same dexterity that he showed in Hearts in Atlantis and Shine, but its still not quite enough to make the movie a world-class effort. That honor remains with the original German offering Bella Marta, and anyone willing to admit literacy and bear with the subtitles would no doubt agree.