I have zero problems with revenge in some circumstances. Sometimes it's just the right thing to do. If you're uncomfortable with it, stay out of the alley.

By now do I even have to spell it out? Perhaps, you know, some medication might help?

You have to be brave to get the medication too. But that kind of bravery involves standing up to the government, not grabbing a gun and shooting everyone who scares you.

Good job on this review, by the way.

Dear Salon,

"Silenced" (which seems to be the name, although rather obviously not the case) just wrote: "....Perhaps, you know, some medication might help?..."

Huh?

My first consideration is that it would also have been nice if that sleepy captain in "The Titanic" had taken some no-doze and maybe seen that iceberg and then turned that bigass boat around so they didn't mash up into the iceberg and Poor Lenoardo wouldn't have had to spend 120 minutes sloshing through ice-water in his wet drawers... but then I guess there wouldn't have been a movie, would there?

Oh well....

David Terry

wwww.davidterryart.com

This sounds like yet another movie trying to convince us that deep down inside we are all killers. Never mind the thousands and thousands of people who lose loved ones to violent crimes and don't resort to bloody revenge. It's not that I mind that Foster's character is a vigilante - if she weren't, it would be a different movie - but I wish Hollywood wouldn't be so dogmatic (and prolific) on this point.

Also - "a tweaked version of Travis Bickle"? Holy cow.

Sometimes you need to stand up to bullies.

What if someone had stood up to the animals that beat her and her fiance to near death earlier? Could that whole tragedy been avoided?

What if someone else who had been savagely beaten and shot these guys earlier? Then Jodie Fosters character would have been spared.

I see true value in using violence against the violent.

When someone is out of control then some outside force needs to stop them.

I'm sure these guys had heard pleanty of their victims scream, "Please stop. Don't." but that had no effect because these types of people are simply out of control. They cannot stop themselves from being violent anymore than a typical wife-beater can. The villians in this piece aren't just "jerks" and Jodie's reaction is a over-reaction. Sometimes mental illness isn't perfectly clear. Not all the mentally ill (and violent) dress in clown suits and wave guns standing in the middle of a mall ranting about how they are the Emporer of the US.

If the cops had no choice but to shoot someone like that to save lives, we can all nod our heads and agree that it was unfortunate but totally necessary to save others.

Are Jodie Foster's character's action really any different? These animals were mentally ill, violent and out of control. She killed them to save the greater good, didn't she? Though her motivations may not necessarily have been rooted in the idea of saving others -- the end result is just the same as if cops had shot a mentally ill man waving a gun, aren't they?

Doesn't anyone remember "Death Wish" (1974) with Charles Bronson? The trailer for this movies seems to be lifted right out of that one. The lone person on the subway, hiding the gun with a news paper. His wife and daughter have recently been murdered in a home invasion. The cops are innefective. Roll to the present. The bad guys enter the otherwise empty train, threaten Bronson who then blows them away. Am I the only one who remembers this? There were four sequels!

When people have lost faith in the institutions of society, especially government, then we get an assortment of revenge fantasies. If the police are corrupt, or "government is the problem, not the solution" then what choice do we have but to fend for ourselves? Perhaps we can band together into groups to protect each other (gangs, warlords), then perhaps we need some rules for conducting our fighting, until ultimately we re-invent government...

This is the inevitable result of the conservative anti-government drumbeat.

Hey Poco, I remember "Death Wish" and its numerous lesser sequels, and I also remember the infinitely superior "Straw Dogs", probably the finest cinematic expression of the notion that any of us can rise up or fall down into a cataclysm of violence if the right buttons are pushed. Still a minor classic.

....the editors choice seem to go to the letters that also found the movie as boring as the reviewer did.

In that case: "The Brave One" is so sterotypical! Gawd! I really, really hated it.

Oh. And I suppose we're supposed to mention that since "Death Wish" was made apparently no movie that even remotely touches on the themes of vigilantism needs to be made. Ever again.

So let me just throw this in there...

"Doesn't anyone remember 'Death Wish'? I mean, c'mon! That film was awesome so why bother making this film?"

(sorry. feeling a little snarky this morning.)

...When did Jodie Foster become Michael Douglas? This feels like a leftover script from his "white rage" period (known to the rest of us as the 1990s). Let me guess: the "animals" she puts down are all Black and Hispanic? But it's okay, you can still feel good about yourself watching it because the cop is Black and really well-spoken (he wears a suit jacket!) and the boyfriend who gets killed is Indian (or Arab or something Brown at any rate but totally sensitive and with dreamy hair) so it is all totally OKAY. And besides, revenge murder is completely justifiable (as long as you are justified) and it's only a movie anyway so, um, RELAX...

I have no interest in this movie because I hate the title. "The Brave One," oh, puh-leeze.

If it's the same rowdy, tattooed group of tough-looking women I saw watching the Bears game at a restaurant/bar in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood last week, this movie is going to be a HUGE hit.