The Hindu : Karnataka News : Needlessly exploitative film reviews

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Sunday, Oct 07, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Needlessly exploitative film reviews

Theme of revenge: A scene from The Brave One.

The Brave One (English)

Cast: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews

Director: Neil Jordan

The lambs have not stopped screaming for Clarice Starling. Remember Jodie Foster as the rookie agent in the film that gave the serial killer Shakespearean respectability in Silence of the Lambs?

Foster has played a series of intense roles, from a child prostitute in Taxi Driver to the rape victim in The Accused.

Of late, in two films, Flight Plan and Panic Room, we have seen Foster play a driven mom fighting all and sundry to protect her child.

The Brave One has Foster turning into a vigilante and cleaning up the underbelly of New York, after her boyfriend is killed in a senseless mugging. The movie is exploitative and that tone is set right in the beginning as the camera lingers as the boyfriend is clubbed to death. There is Terrence Howard playing the good cop who believes in the law and all that is good.

India is so much the flavour of the season. For apart from Naveen Andrews playing the boyfriend (even though he dies in the beginning) and mention of a Mughal ring, the revenge theme so beloved of Bollywood seems to be the central motif. Because it is Jodie Foster and not Quentin Tarantino there are all sorts of justifications to the violence that sound hollow and contrived. Dog lovers should perhaps stay away from this film as there are anxious moments, which are resolved later in the silliest way.

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

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