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Created Feb 23, 2008 11:57PM PST • Edited Jul 11, 2018 06:16PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Pretty Bad 1.5

   The Brave One is a competent thriller undone by an out-of-time setting: 21st century New York City just doesn’t support a premise of urban paranoia. So the movie comes across as more absurd than thrilling.

   While I’ll always be a Jody Foster fan (who isn’t?), the woman has to start making better career choices.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   Jody Foster and Terrence Howard are two first class movie stars. Sadly, they’re wasted in this stinker.

   Why has she – in particular – made such poor choices of late? She’s become the Paranoia Queen: Panic Room, Flightplan, now “The Brave One.” Like Michael Douglas in his early 90’s heyday (Basic Instinct, Falling Down, Disclosure), she’s fatally attracted to movies that make base instincts appear high minded.

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Pretty Bad 1.5

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

12. Play Pretty Awful 0.5

13. Music Barely OK 2.0

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Fierce 1.9

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

    Sadly for traffickers in urban misery, the crime reductions in New York and other big cities over the past 20 years no longer support civilian avenger stories. While Jody Foster’s character ironically refers to NY’s “safest big city in America” moniker, that doesn’t inoculate the story from its essential absurdity.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.4

    Thrillers that descend into circumstantial surrealism no longer thrill. They posture, ridiculously.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0