In the attempt to fill the holes in her heart, Erica buys a black-market gun and pumps holes into violent men who prey on New York's helpless. Each time she fires, she re-experiences the embrace of her lost love. In becoming the men who killed David, Erica tries to resurrect him.
The Brave One resurrects a genre popular in the 1970s - the vigilante cycle of Dirty Harry, Death Wish and Taxi Driver - when America was embroiled in an unpopular war.
It's tempting to read the movie as a commentary on 9/11 and Iraq, a New Yorker who seeks revenge on those who destroyed her city. This is the intent of the film that suggests that as 9/11 has forever changed America, it has altered Erica (whose name is a shorter version of America). But that would be to accept that this lurid when-women-kill film is high-minded. It is an unexceptional genre movie graced with exceptional performances from Foster, costar Terrence Howard and Nicky Katt.
Anachronistically, the town Erica ruefully refers to as "the safest big city in the world" less resembles the shiny, borough-sized shopping mall that is New York of 2007 than the abandoned industrial city of 1977 where unemployment and random violence lurked everywhere. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot's New York Nocturne is moody and expressive - of Manhattan circa the Abe Beame administration.
Erica's murder spree frustrates the efforts of police detective Sean Mercer (Howard, heavyhearted and light-footed) who naturally assumes the vigilante is a man.
"Women kill their husbands, their children, people they love," observes Sean's partner, Det. Vitale (wryly funny Katt). Men, he notes, turn their anger outward. They kill strangers.
