Following in the footsteps of the Death Wish movies and this year’s earlier Death Sentence, Neil Jordan’s The Brave One tries with every bit of skill and talent it's got to bring more complexity to the themes of vigilance and revenge. Instead of merely attempting to make the viewers complicit in the enjoyment of watching the wronged protagonists stepping outside the legal system and taking matters into their own hands, it uses a great actress like Jodie Foster to see the conflicted emotions such actions can yield. Ultimately, however, even this story loses its worth as it cowers from examining the real social consequences involved.

Like the first Death Wish, the movie sets itself in New York City where we meet radio personality Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) who happily lives with her fiancé, David (Naveen Andrews). One night on a casual stroll through Central Park, they are savagely beaten by a group of random thugs, one of whom even captures the several minute long, bloody, brutal attack on his cell phone camera. She survives the vicious attack but is left in a coma for several months and when she wakes up, she is informed by David's mother that she missed his funeral.

The subsequent moments that depict Bain’s post-traumatic stress syndrome are when the film works best. There are few who can compellingly play characters rattled to the core better than Jodie Foster and her visible transition from love for the city to alienation and apprehension is tangible and will certainly be relatable for those who have been in urban crime situations. She trembles even at the slight bumping of a shoulder from a passer-by and, in fear for herself, she decides to illegally buy a gun.

A tipping point arrives one night when she is at a convenience store and encounters a violent thug who shoots and murders the clerk. She tries to hide in a corner of the store but when a cell phone gives away her location and he goes looking for her, she is forced to shoot the man dead to save her own life. She goes home relieved to be alive but shudders at the thought of her first killing.

From that moment on, however, her number of violent run-ins only implausibly increases (the first ones are accidental but soon she goes prowling the night looking for them) and she is soon cited in tabloids as the nameless vigilante, signs that disappointingly alert us that this film will fall into the same old predictable pattern of the genre. To be sure, she narrates to herself that she is afraid that she is growing addicted to killing and she does not know the person she is becoming (the inherent duality from the fact that she is a public radio DJ is an added nice touch). But when her conflicted thoughts never translate into action and she transforms herself so instantly into a confident gunwoman (she never seems to tremble when she is pulling the trigger after that convenience store encounter), the alternation between her cold dispatch of the bad guys on the street and her reflective narration grows rather repetitive.