Drama for drama's sake.Very predictable. Maybe you can't see the ending, but surely you will know what goes next. So no thriller there.And it is slow. Maybe for the producer that meant moody. But everything goes in slow motion making the two hours absurd. A lot more could have been said in 90 minutes.The story is badly done. And the characters have to speak their thoughts so it would make some sense.And the stereotype is disgusting. The blind and destructive force a woman can be when she is left unmarried. The violent black thugs dressed in new sports gear - they have to steal to dress in those expensive branded clothing. The Asian guy selling the gun who is Asian because it's Chinatown.And everything has to happen in the same small area and about the same hour so we get the same detective. Who has probably seen the movie because he already knows it's the same person.And the main idea? The laws are there to hinder the good in their quest for justice. Right? A film for the hysterical white middle class behind iron doors. The victims are white. Sure, the policeman is the token black so nobody can accuse the producers of racism.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

The Brave One (2007): Dir: Neil Jordan / Cast: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt, Mary Steenburgen: Why they titled this film as such is a puzzle. There is nothing brave about what Erika Bain does here. She is a radio personality whose fiancée is killed during a mugging and her purchases of an illegal gun and begins to pick off muggers, pimps and general outcasts. Total recycled without a shred of originality. Charles Bronson practically pioneered this plot with Death Wish, but Zoe Tamerlis made for a much more fetching heroine in Ms. 45. This is the total opposite of the storytelling that worked so well in those films. Director Neil Jordan does his best but this is a far cry from the originality of his previous film Breakfast On Pluto. Jodie Foster is one of the finest actresses of her generation but as Bain she is reduced too a formula plot where contrivances occur almost by the second. Terrence Howard plays a police detective who will end up turning a blind eye because we're called to view her as a symbol of good despite her questionable sense of direction. Naveen Andrews as Foster's fiancée isn't very broad, and Nicky Katt as Howard's partner is wasted. Contrived bullshit happens once a robbery and murder occur right after Bain purchases a gun. With that said, this is far beneath Jordan and Foster who both must brave the reduction. Score: 2 / 10

This is a review of "The Miracle", "The Brave One" and "Mona Lisa", three films by director Neil Jordan.Released in 1991, "The Miracle" stars Niall Byrne as Jimmy, a teenager living in coastal Ireland. Jimmy spends his days wandering about town, inventing fantastical personal histories for the various strangers who catch his eye.Jimmy's fantasies spiral out of control when he meets Renee (Beverly D'Angelo), a stylish older woman. Jimmy stalks Renee, visits her at the theatre houses at which she works, and becomes increasingly infatuated with her; he's in love. These desires quickly become perverse, untenable and then collapse, the film eventually revealing that Renee is in fact Jimmy's mother.The majority of Jordan's films clash fairy tales and fantasies with a "reality" that is squalid, criminal and perverse. Rather than clear cut demarcations between "fantasy" and "reality", however, Jordan finds the fairy tale conventions lurking within crime narratives, and finds the crime conventions lurking within familiar fairy tale narratives. Elsewhere his characters are often unable to be together thanks to national, sexual or biological differences which make romance impossible. Filled with fantasy objects who are revealed to be different genders, species (vampires, werewolves, mermaids etc), incestuous relatives, homosexuals or transsexuals, Jordan's objects of affection are almost always off limits.For most of its running time, "The Miracle" is beautifully unhurried. Low-key, atmospheric and filled with interesting sea-side locales, the film unfolds like a noirish dream, complete with stalking sequences evocative of Alfred Hitchcock's "Veritgo". Unfortunately the film's relaxed approach eventually gives way to much uninteresting Oedipal melodrama.Similar to "The Miracle" is Jordan's "Mona Lisa". Released in 1986, the film stars Bob Hoskins as George, an ex-convict who is hired to ferry a call girl, Simone (Cathy Tyson), around London. Though they initially feud, George quickly becomes infatuated with Simone, and begins to see himself as her guardian angel, her white knight, her lover. Simone nurses these fantasies, but eventually reveals that she is in fact not attracted to George; she's homosexual."Jordan's use of the fairy tale is not a correction or parody of their supposedly outdated values," writer and professor Carole Zucker once wrote, "rather, he investigates what it means to listen to fairy tales, what it means to trust narrative and what it means to follow their paths. His films often show the messy results of fairy tales, the awkward ways in which we interact with our shared store of narratives and the complex interrelation of past and future that make fairy tales such vivid material for impassioned pastiche." We see this in "Mona Lisa", as George imposes upon Simone a fairy tale that she shares, allows and secretly wishes to make real. Together the duo warp London – a perverse hell-hole filled with shadowy spaces, monsters, prostitutes and violence – turning it into their own magical fantasy-land, complete with modern chariots, damsels, white-knights and noble quests. Simone eventually abandons this charade, leaving George disillusioned.Perhaps because she is bisexual, and fond of Jordan's past explorations of sexuality, actress Jodie Foster approached Jordan with a script in the mid 2000s. This would evolve into "The Brave One", a 2007 work-for-hire which Jordan struggled to make his own.Set in New York City, "The Brave One" stars Foster as Erica. In love with her city, Erica spends her days fawning over New York's past, admiring its spaces, recording the city's sounds and praising it on her live radio show. This idyll is shattered when Erica's lover is violently murdered, a murder which is give racial/political connotations given the victim's ethnicity and given the films nods to the infamous 9/11 terror attacks. Jaded, disillusioned and seeking to resurrect her fantasy, Erica buys a gun and becomes a vigilante; she begins taking the law into her own hands.Vigilatees and angelic defenders are common in Jordan's filmography (see his debut, "Angel"). In "The Bave One", however, Erica is herself defended by the police detective (Terrence Howard) tasked with taking her down. The duo thus rekindle Jordan's obsession with impossible love, the criminal and the cop locked in unholy passion.Fittingly, "The Miracle", "The Brave One" and "Mona Lisa" all contain major characters who are writers and so tireless fantasists. In "Mona Lisa", George's best friend is a crime fiction writer. In "The Bave One", Erica herself strings words lovingly together, and in "The Miracle", two aspiring writers spend their days constructing wild tales. For Jordan, human beings are rarely more than heart-broken delusion machines.7/10 - Worth one viewing.

'The Brave One' tells the tragic story of Erica Bain, a middle-aged woman about to be married to the man of her dreams when she and her fiancé are brutally attacked and their dream is shattered. What happens next is a thrilling roller coaster ride of a vigilante getting even and bringing those responsible to death on her own. I love this movie and I put it up there on the list of Jodie Foster's most best stand out performances in her film history. Of course that's not a shock considering that she's great in everything, but this movie as a whole is powerful. Touching, genuine, and enthralling from start to finish, you would be doing yourself a favor by watching this movie.