Foster starts off peculiarly bad, with a clichéd enactment of true love, but further into the movie, she winds up being very good, subtly detailing her character’s transformative journey into the heart of darkness without losing the humanity. Even her physical looks change throughout the film.

There are a few interesting performances in the film. Terrence Howard turns up as Sean Mercer, a detective determined to find the vigilante and Mary Steenburgen is refreshing as Carol, Erica's no-nonsense boss at the radio station. As the lost and conflicted Erica Bain, Jodie Foster pulls out all the stops, giving multiple layers to an otherwise single-minded character.

Alas, the plotting in The Brave One is rather pedestrian and often flawed with very little in the story that makes sense. By the time the big moment arrives when Erica faces the three hoodlums who murdered her true love and irreversibly changed her life, it’s clear that The Brave One was intended to represent a pre-Giuliani era (the movie portrays NYC like it’s the dangerous '70s). Without giving anything away, let’s just say that for all its problematic plot mechanics, The Brave One turns out to be little more than an upscale Hollywood B-movie about getting even.