Flaky ending aside, THE BRAVE ONE is pretty decent

THE BRAVE ONE is more intelligent and more patient than your average revenge thriller. Usually these flicks take a more or less explicit and malicious pleasure in the protagonist beating the crap out of the bad guy. THE BRAVE ONE distinguishes itself by not lingering over the violence at all. Jodie Foster plays a DJ whose fiance is killed by a bunch of thuggish happy-slappers and resorts to killing bad guys in an effort to regain control. The heart of the film is her relationship with the cop who is investigating the case. He's portrayed by Terrence Howard in yet another stand-out performance. The crux of the piece is whether or not Howard's character will have the fortitude to shop the women he knows is guilty of murdering people he knows are beyond the grasp of the justice system he believes in. The film oozes class. The performances are top notch; the camera-work is penetrating; the characters believable....that is, until the final reel. Still, despite the flaky ending, it's great to see the revenge thriller rescued from the trash-can.

THE BRAVE ONE played Toronto 2007 and is on release in the USA, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Spain, the UK, Slovenia and Denmark. It opens in Egypt, Australia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Finland, Iceland and Lithuania next weekend. It opens in Czech Republic and Hungary on October 18th, in Argentina on October 25th, in Japan, Slovakia and Brazil on November 2nd.