The Brave One

This movie has it all. It joins such greats as Red Dawn, The Patriot, Shooter, and Uprising in the category of movies that should be shown, four times a year, to every child in public school, so long as we allow public schools to continue their malicious and unconstitutional existence.

Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain, who's engaged to Sayid from Lost. She's beaten near to death and he's killed in a spurt of random violence while walking their dog in central park.

Upon waking up, she's shaken. DUH. On impulse she goes to a gun store to buy a gun. This being the high-crime, gun-free utopia of The People's Republic of New York, the harried gun shop owner tells her to apply for a license and come back in thirty days. When she says "I won't live thirty days" he tells her "That's the law."

You have no idea how hard I clapped for that part. All the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

She's eventually sold a Kahr K9 by a guy who overheard the conversation, and she starts carrying it.

The second time she's the victim of random violence, she's a little better prepared. She terminates the man who kills the convenience store clerk who's store she's shopping in, moments before he could attack here.

Let's just think about this for a minute. We've got a woman, who was denied a gun by the government of New York, buying a gun AND carrying it illegally, defending her life successfully.

How DID this movie get made? Seriously. What bed-wetting liberal Hollywood producer was smoking crack when he greenlit this movie, and how can I send him some more crack to smoke? I want to see more of these types of movies.

Erica Bain then starts haunting the bad parts of the city, killing the people who try to take advantage of a petite, middle aged female, who's walking through the bad parts of New York alone.

Eventually she finds the scum who murdered Sayid and took her dog, and after some really, really good one-liners, kills all three of them, with the assistance of the cop who's been hunting the "vigilante" who's been stalking the city.

Along the way we have some soft girl-rock introspective moments, and a whole lot of Dennis LeHane style grit and angst as Erica goes from average Jane to someone who's not incredibly bother by taking out the trash, figuratively. One of the cool things that this movie doesn't delve into is her motives. Yes, she's hunting the city. Why? She obvious is distraught over the handful of notches on her gun's grip, why does she keep going back.

No easy answers, just lots of good old-fashioned American justice, and a couple really touching scenes with a dog.

Last year it was Shooter, which featured Mark Wahlberg beating up cops and shooting U.S. senators with the incredibly manly 1911. This year it's Jodie Foster illegally carrying a concealed weapon and being applauded for it. At long last, there's a part of this country that I don't fear for quite as much. Maybe Hollywood is finally pulling their head out of their nethers and taking a peek around.