Jodie Foster does her best Charles Bronson impersonation in The Brave One, a dark, vigilante thriller in which a woman (played by Foster) decides to take out the garbage after she and her husband (played by Naveen Andrews) are beaten by street thugs while taking a nightly stroll through a park in New York City. Shades of Death Wish are completely apparent, but director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) pulls a gender switch thus lending a slightly different edge to the proceedings.

The first half hour of this picture is quite strong. Foster and Andrews provide real chemistry as the doomed couple. Once Foster's life is plunged into emotional chaos, she doesn't immediately begin stalking the scum of the Earth - it takes a chance encounter at a local liquor store to push her over the edge, and that's when the movie becomes a bit too much to swallow. What starts off as a kind of morality play, quickly turns into a processed crowd pleaser which would be fine if the movie knew what it really wanted to be. Instead it switches tone on a dime. At a glance, The Brave One is a film about a woman attempting to move forward after a tragic event, but then, it quickly turns into a flick that appears to be condoning the very same behavior that it seemed to be so opposed to in the opening moments. Some of The Brave One's best scenes revolve around a bond that develops between Foster and a dedicated cop (played winningly by Terrence Howard) assigned to her case. These two powerful actors play off of one another beautifully.

During the climax of the film, I thought the movie might rebound. As Foster comes ever so closer to completing her mission, there's a coldness to her decisions that feel completely appropriate. But then the tone is undermined, once again, when Howard's character performs the most ridiculous move in the entire movie. It's an out of character moment that nearly destroys what little impact the film strives to deliver. The Brave One is wildly uneven, but I'm giving it a recommendation because Foster and Howard are so darned good in it. They deserved a better screenplay.