The Lame One

Jodie Foster and Terence Howard brave the mindless cold of Neil Jordan's latest

The Brave One begins by building on the perplexing question of vigilantism, and is unbuilt swiftly with the aid of one of those astonishingly vapid scripts that somehow went to the screen rather than the shredder. Foster and Howard are reservoirs of talent, but Jordan seems unable to give them much more to do than shoot people, or talk to each other about shooting people. The silliness of the whole thing is aggravated by its length, and bombast gives it the hoary air of a pretentious sandwich. I recommend a miss.

Note: Vigilantism has attracted better product (if not better talent) than this, in the form of Shyamalan’s somewhat unloved hit Unbreakable. There the ethical problem of individual heroism is distinguished by the filmmaker's penchant for gravitas. The Brave One has similar aspirations, but with no weight to back it and a taste for grandeur that’s mortifyingly misplaced.