Mercer, unlike his colleagues, cares probably a little too much about catching bad guys and finds himself almost unwittingly invested in Erica's post-attack life. In the scenes following the attack, Jordan frames Erica as the only character in focus, and gives her enough room to feel both completely cut off from her fellow New Yorkers and under seemingly permanent threat of someone penetrating her bubble of isolation.Īdded to this otherwise simple story of revenge is Erica's burgeoning relationship with Mercer (Terrence Howard), a cop who takes an interest in her case. Thankfully, such is not the case: Unlike many movies in recent memory dealing with death or personal loss, The Brave One closely examines Erica's grief, giving the character enough time to cultivate the sadness, confusion and eventually frustration that leads her to kill someone.
In spite of the seeming focus on Erica's retaliation against the people who create fear in others (admittedly making her sound a little like Batman, or given Foster's previous films, a female Travis Bickle), one might expect that the emotional underpinnings of her story would go unexplored in lieu of revenge fantasies and violent set pieces.
But after she shoots a would-be robber during a convenience store holdup, she discovers that the weapon offers more than physical protection rather, it provides a cathartic - and violent - outlet for the fear and anger that resides over David's death. Following repeated attempts to solicit information from the cops, Erica buys a gun out of fear she won't survive. Erica awakens three weeks later to discover that David is gone, his funeral was already performed, and the police are all but completely uninterested in finding the men responsible. Dangerously happy with her fiance David (Naveen Andrews), the two are attacked in Central Park and he is fatally assaulted. Foster plays Erica, an NPR-like radio host who spends her days recording street sounds and editing them into bite-size ruminations about the history of New York.
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