Jodie Foster needs to learn a new dance. Perhaps there is something appealing to Foster in playing the role of a single woman in the midst of a life-changing crisis. After her recent efforts in disappointing films like Panic Room and Flightplan, Foster goes for it one more time in The Brave One, with similar results. In the end, solid performances by Foster and Terrence Howard cannot elevate The Brave One above what it is: a cliché-ridden, paint-by-numbers thriller hardly worth commenting on, let alone spending two hours of one’s life watching.

Foster portrays Erica Bain, happily engaged host of a radio show called Street Walk, a monologue that attempts to capture the spirit and heartbeat of the streets of New York City. Delivered in a soft-spoken, monotone drone, Bain sounds like something you would hear on NPR, complete with an arrogant, elitist, ultra-intellectual chic attitude that seems to shout “I’m smarter than all of you.” Bain’s idealistic view on city life is shattered one night when she and her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews, Lost) are brutally attacked by a gang of thugs in Central Park. (One would think that entering a section of the park called Strangers Gate after night-fall might not be a good idea but, hey, that’s just me.) She wakes up from her critical injuries to discover that David is dead and buried while she is left to pick up the pieces of her life. Through it, she discovers the timeless truth that sometimes living is a lot more difficult than dying.

Scared, alone (more on that later) and afraid on the streets of a city that she once loved, Bain resorts to arming herself with a 9mm (illegally purchased quite easily to circumvent the mandatory waiting-period law). At first, Bain uses it in self-defense—more than once it turns out. Seems like she is suddenly a magnet for every despicable criminal in the Big Apple: an estranged husband gunning down his ex in a liquor store, a group of ghetto thugs on a subway train (horribly stereotyped as gangsta-rapper wannabe’s) and a john abusing one of his tricks. Her forays into street justice are soon no longer self-defense but self-therapeutic. Bain’s bloody exploits catch the eye of Detective Sean Mercer (the always powerful Howard), a sympathetic cop who is torn between wanting to clean up the streets and his limited ability to do so by the very laws he is sworn to uphold. His analysis of the vigilante is spoken in a tone of near admiration: “Someone is playing God in the name of justice.”

Mercer and Bane cross paths for entirely different motives. She sees in him the opportunity for a good story; he finds her appealing in her brokenness and longing for justice and closure. The unmistakable chemistry between Foster and Howard is the one element of The Brave One that works. Their scenes together crackle with tension and director Neil Jordan resists the temptation to reduce their relationship to something lurid and impulsive. Evan as Mercer’s suspicions about Bane are uncovered and, ultimately, confirmed, he remains compassionate and graceful finally realizing that his black and white view of law becomes blurred when it comes to matters of the heart. Their respect for each other is truly heartfelt and beautiful. Too bad the rest of The Brave One is so ugly.

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