Movie · 2007 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 2m · R · English
Curator score: 1.4/10 (66.9K ratings)
How many wrongs to make it right?
Overview
A woman struggles to recover from a brutal attack by setting out on a mission for revenge.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.4/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
Metacritic: 56
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Neil Jordan
Production
Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Nicky Katt, Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen, Ene Oloja, Luis Da Silva, Jr., Blaze Foster, Rafael Sardina, Zoë Kravitz, Gordon MacDonald, John Magaro, Jane Adams, Victor Colicchio, Jermel Howard, Dennis L.A. White, Laila Liliana Garro, James Biberi, Brian Delate, Lenny Venito
Curator Review
Verdict
A grim, trauma-driven revenge thriller with a strong central performance from Jodie Foster, but it’s more compelling as a character study than as a fully satisfying genre piece. The film’s moral unease and New York atmosphere give it weight, even if the plotting and payoff feel uneven.
Best for
Viewers who like revenge stories with psychological fallout
Fans of Jodie Foster-led dramas
People who prefer subdued, methodical thrillers over action-heavy vigilante films
Audiences interested in post-trauma urban paranoia
Skip if
You want a clean, cathartic revenge fantasy
You need airtight plotting and a strong final payoff
You dislike morally ambiguous protagonists
You prefer fast-paced action over brooding drama
Overview
The Brave One is one of those revenge films that is more interested in the wound than the retaliation. Neil Jordan frames the city as a place that feels permanently unsafe, and Jodie Foster gives the material a tense, wounded intelligence that keeps it grounded even when the script strains for plausibility.
Worth noting
What works best is the film’s uneasy mood: fear, vigilance, and the seduction of self-protection all hang over it. It’s less a thriller built on twists than a study of what violence does to a person’s sense of self, and that gives it a sharper edge than the average vigilante movie.
Bottom line
Still, the movie can feel schematic, and some of its moral and procedural turns are too neat for the bleakness it wants to project. If you come for a hard-edged character piece, there’s enough here to hold attention; if you want a more forceful revenge engine, it may leave you wanting more.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Silent J (4★) · 159 likes
It's like Taxi Driver, only instead of a psychopathic cab driver like Travis, it's prostitute Iris all grown up as a radio host.
MJsays (3.5★) · 93 likes
Why let karma do the work for you when cold-blooded revenge is 100 x more satisfying?!
Andrew James (4★) · 80 likes
I'm slowly realizing that Neil Jordan is one of my favorite directors. Not because he does anything truly amazing every time he gets behind the camera, but because he has some interesting ideas and usually fleshes them out into generally solid pictures. Take The Brave One as an example.
People claiming the film to be dull are probably those that really want revenge and blood and guts and fist pumping. Not a methodical character study that looks at the idea… more
jessica🐾 (2.5★) · 78 likes
John Wick approves of Jodie Foster’s methods to get her dog back
Mos Co (2.5★) · 69 likes
The cop arrives at the murder scene, looks at the body and says “Christ on a cracker” bro what?