One of Jodie Foster's earliest starring roles was in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, a dark and angry vigilante film set in the middle of New York City. Interesting then that more than three decades after that film was made she'd play vigilante prowling the streets of New York City herself, though her Erica Bain is about as far removed from the searing misguided anger of De Niro's Travis Bickle as you can get.

Erica hosts a radio show where she talks about New York, a city she has an obvious affinity for. When she and her fiancé, David (Naveen Andrews), walk their dog in Central Park late one night and decide to let their dog off of its leash for a run, they run into trouble. Three punks snatch the dog, beat Erica to a pulp, and send David to his deathbed. Erica wakes up from a three week coma to find her fiancé is dead and that the cops haven't had any luck bringing the thugs in.

Understandably enough, Erica is very shock up over what's happened to her and she decides to buy a handgun. Without a gun permit, she resorts to buying one on the black market and before you know it, she witnesses a murder and in order to save her own life finds herself in the position where she has to use it. Later, when she's threatened at knife point on a subway train, she'll use it again and the police soon ascertain that there's a vigilante prowling the streets of New York City. Meanwhile, Erica is finding the strength to put her life back together. She's back at work and becoming fast friends with one of the police officers assigned to her case, Detective Mercer (Terrance Howard). Part of her still burns for what happened to David, however, and that part wants the kind of justice that she knows that police cannot give her.

Directed by Academy Award winner Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), what makes The Brave One stand out from other vigilante films cut from the same cloth is its emphasis on character development before its emphasis on action. While there are a few tense and violent scenes in the picture, those expecting to see Foster conjure up the spirit of Charles Bronson are going to be disappointed. The focus of the film here is on Erica's suffering and how it manifests in her need for revenge. The film touches on the inefficiency of the police in a city as sprawling and massive as New York but it doesn't point fingers or preach, rather it keeps itself confined to Erica's tale rather than take an overly political approach to the idea.

Jordan keeps the film moving along at a good pace and he does a good job of allowing the essence of New York to seep into the celluloid and very much become as important a character in his film as any of the human actors. If there's one complain, it's that the circumstances that come into play after David's death are a little unrealistic. With Erica living in a very expensive and well-to-do neighborhood in Manhattan, it's unlikely (though not all together impossible) that she'd run into as the problems she does, particularly when you consider that New York is crawling with cops in this day and age. That's a minor issue, however and we're able to suspend our disbelief easily enough to look past it.

Foster carries the film well. Her unique facial features are starting to show their age and while she's still an attractive woman, the years have put her in the right place to play a character such as Erica. She a talented actress and deserving of all the accolades that have been piled on her over the years, and her turn here is just as good as you'd expect from a two time Oscar winner. Supporting turns from Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen and especially Terrence Howard round out the cast nicely with believable performances and realistic presence. This is a well cast film and Jordan keeps everything in check.

While the film could have delved deeper into Bain's psyche and played up the devastation that she experiences, she's never the less given enough motivation that we can't help but feel for her. The Brave One may not do anything all that new with the premise, but it does do it better than a lot of the films that have come before it by crafting a very real character and allowing us to understand her motivations. It is, to an extent, fairly predictable but at least its predictability stays within the realm of possibility.

Video:

The Brave One arrives on HD DVD in a very nice 1080p/VC-1 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image is crisp and clean and while Jordan used a fairly subdued color palette for this picture, things look quite good here despite a few moments where the picture is a tiny bit soft. There aren't any problems with print damage or mpeg compression nor are there any problems with edge enhancement. Skin tones look nice and natural throughout the film and there's a very nice level of both foreground and background detail present throughout almost the entire movie. A little bit of grain shows up here and there but it compliments the image nicely and black levels stay fairly consistent and strong. This is a combo disc, so the flip side of the HD DVD contains a 2.40.1 anamorphic 480p standard definition transfer of the film.