by Lou Lumenick
September 14, 2007 -- "THE Central Park Jogger and Bernie Goetz meet "Death Wish" in post-9/11 New York in "The Brave One," an awkward concept put over by Jodie Foster's award-caliber performance and expert direction by Neil Jordan. The real-life jogger attack, Goetz's subway vigilante and the fictional adventures of Charles Bronson's character took place in the genuinely scary Manhattan of the '70s and '80s. But that Big Apple is a far cry from what has become - as Foster's character, a public radio personality named Erica puts it - "the safest big city in the world."
Not that it's a great idea to travel through the upper reaches of Central Park after dark, even when you're walking your dog and accompanied by your young fiancé (Naveen Andrews of "Lost").
A chance, brutal encounter with a gang is fatal for the fiancé and leaves Erica physically and emotionally battered.
Released from the hospital after months of recovery, she's unable to work and discovers that little has been done to apprehend the culprits.
More disturbingly, Erica no longer feels safe on the streets of her Upper West Side neighborhood and decides to acquire an illegal weapon in Chinatown.
It's a fateful choice that gives Erica an awful, violent option when she finds herself trapped in a convenience store with a gunman who's killed his wife.
She's horrified at what she's done, but a subsequent encounter with knife-wielding thugs on a subway car earns her celebrity - including the front page of The Post - as an anonymous vigilante killer.
Though she's hardened into a different person, Erica returns to the airways to lead a call-in discussion of the mysterious vigilante."
Enough, already. Jodie Foster is a good actress. She has to be, for she detests guns and believes emotional beings should not have the capability to kill one another, because, after all, we're all so emotional.
PMS feelings aside, this Taxi-Driver-Death-Wish wannabe IS different because it features a female protagonist, and what with all the jumping and kicking heroines populating the modern theatrical fairlyand offerings that strive to imbibe some semblance of political correctness into what in real life is a male affair, it was only a matter of time before Hollyweird trotted out yet another girl going where only men had gone before.
No, I won't be seeing it, not on the big screen at least. This is a when-it-comes-to-cable feature if ever there was one.
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