The Brave One

Er, it's "Jodie". J-o-d-i-e.

Er...didn't you state in another thread you weren't going to be posting here any longer? I hate it when my hopes are dashed against the rocks. Thank you for nitpicking and not even bothering to address the post. At least it brought the thread back up to the recent posts status.

To get back to the point, any thoughts on this film?

At one point in the interview, the talk was on taking the viewer on a journey, where it starts at a point we could all basically agree on, then takes us step by step to where we find ourselves not so sure what we would do.

Sometimes, when I hear people (or myself for that matter) saying "I would never do this and such" I have to wonder..."Really?"

I think it depends on the catalyst, or just those small steps that take us to a place we'd never thought we'd be.

After listening to the interview, I wondered how soon someone would say that this was just going to be an incentive for someone to go and act out. This has been done with other movies...one with Woody Harrelson comes to mind.

Sure enough, yesterday, when they read letters on the show, someone brought something like that up. About how there's so much violence, why show more....blah blah blah.

I think this film will appeal more to people who aren't going to watch it and think they are going to go out and become a one person vigilante. Remember the movie "Death Wish" from the 70's? Did people go out and act on that? I don't know. Does anyone remember?

Chai - it's a female, updated version of Death Wish.
Same ol' Jodie Foster; same stern, determined, no-one-believes-me, no-one-can-do-it-like-me looks, steel jaws, blazing eyes.

She only has one character, and she plays it over and over with just different scenerios.

Oh....have you seen the movie happycat?



Just my opinion, but I don't see Jodie like that at all, as far a only having one character.

What else did you get out of the movie?

For instance, in the interview, she says something, it was more in her tone than what she actually said, of expressing this through the eyes of a female.

If a man turns vigilante in a movie, I do often get the impression of "I'm not going to take this anymore", but I'm really not surprised he takes action, even if he starts out as a mild mannered person like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

If a female decides she's had enough, there's really no role model for her, besides looking at the Charles Bronson, take no hostages type characters.

I don't see Foster blasting away in a bad guys in the stairwell scene...or does that happen.

For some reason, I'm thinking of this movie I watched a while back, can't remember the name.

It was in 1950's England, and the main character was this absolutely normal housewife in her 40's, that cleaned houses for a living, and took care of her husband and children. Always doing a good dead, checking in on sick neighbors, etc.

However, she occassionally performed the odd abortion on a neighborhood girl. Her family knew nothing about it, no one did. She kept quiet about her activities because she knew what she was doing was illegal. I struggled with trying to figure out if she was this kind person, or a sociopath hiding behind a housewife mask.
Anyway, she was eventually caught, because one of the girls got an infection and either died or almost died, and she was absolutely devistated. In her heart she never felt what she was doing was wrong. Although a gentle soul, she had lived long enough in her working class world to know what a pregancy would do to a young unmarried girl and her future, or to a married lady who just could not withstand having one more child because her husband wouldn't wear a condom. (segway for a moment...there was one scene where she was at a womans house, and the women sent her children out to play. They quickly performed the procedure, and the abortee immediately said to the woman something like "get out...he's coming"...the husband came home at that instant, and the wife had to just behave like nothing happend...maybe I don't have that exactly right, but the feeling was there that the abortionist had done that woman a big favor)...when in court, it was discovered she had never charged anyone for these procedures, she was puzzled that anyone would think she would take money for "helping out"

Anyway, in my mind, without having seen the moving, I feel like I'm relating to the story line in this way. That from a womans perspective, she is really helping rid the world of something undesirable. That knowing women wouldn't generally take this stance, it was unusual for has she said in the interview something like "you've been doing this to us, now....I'm gonna do this to you"

No I didn't see the movie Chai. And I won't see it. The several trailers I've seen have told me enough that I don't have an interest in it.

I've seen several (maybe all) of Foster's films and while the story lines may be interesting and different, she still plays the same character over and over. (That's pretty much what I said in my initial post.)

well then happycat, it looks like you have nothing else to offer me in conversation.





moving on....

I think another interesting choice of the movie was the fact the main character is a national public radio host.

Foster said in the interview they were going to initially go with the character being a reporter of a newspaper like the NYT's.

I thought to myself "Oh no, not ANOTHER newspaper reporter who gets in the thick of things over a story he/she has covered. I've seen some good movies in the past where the work environment was a newspaper, or a TV reporter who goes to all these high action places and gets all involved. However, I have to be honest, the newspaper industry does not really entrall me. I find that newspaper reporters, in movies develop this obession with "getting the story", and, in real life, I've seen them hound people to death with the excuse that "the people want to know" Same with TV news. I think reporters have ruined many individuals lives for the opportunity to get their airtime.

I'm intrigued by the premise Fosters character plays a national public radio host. Although of course they do go out and cover stories, I somehow don't envision Michele Norris, Corey Flintoff or Sylvia Piggioli getting it in their head one day to right the worlds wrong.

I suppose I fill more kinship with that.

wasn't trying to be funny.
you've made up your mind it's one way. and it seems that's the end of that. what more to say?

I'd like to hear what others think.

I don't think you and I have seen the same Jodie Foster movies.

Yeah, she sure wasn't that way on "Courtship of Eddies Father"

I can remember being a kid and watching Courtship of EF, when Jodie was in a couple of epiosodes. I remember thinking "Wow, this kid is really good. She's gonna go somewhere"


Although....she was pretty tough on Mrs. Livingston.

I must've seen all the ones Happycat has. Inside Man, Panic Room, Flightplan...even Contact was full of breathing hard and jaw thrusting.

(As a matter of fact, I remember now, we saw them together! My, didn't we have fun, just two kitties hangin' out, having a video fest, watching Jodie Foster clenching those jaws of steel? heehee...)

I'm just joking, by the way. She's been in about a million things, and she's played a lot of different kinds of characters.

It just happens that her last three in a row were that type that Happycay was talking about.

Yep, we shared a big bag of catnip at the theatre.
Those are the movies I was thinking of....and that's exactly what she does best; play the victim that triumphs at the end.

Oh and Chai, I know you didn't mean to be funny.
But you were.