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Violence that transforms

THEY say that revenge never achieves anything. But what if they're wrong? What if revenge is right, feels good and karmically satisfies those parts that the law just can't reach? That's the premise of Neil Jordan's film The Brave One, in which Jodie Foster gives a tough, lonely performance as a bereaved woman who buys a gun and begins using it against the lowlifes of New York.

Of course, "the civilised guy who flips" is an established narrative convention —the yuppie in peril whose veneer of niceness cracks when someone threatens his comfort zone: think about Michael Douglas sweatily going bats in Falling Down. The venge-pic goes one step further, permitting the protagonist's violence by showing why his victims deserved it and how the authorities turned a blind eye, thereby creating a moral imbalance which only the vengeful hero can reset. Combine the guilt of the victims with the ineffectiveness of the justice system, and you have the setup for some gory retribution that will have people cheering in their seats.

It's this sense of righting wrong, together with the kinetic thrill of violence itself, that fed the success of the recent British film Outlaw. And it seems the desire to punish the bad never subsides: this year's BFI London Film Festival will be showing the South Korean film No Mercy for the Rude, by Park Chul-hee, in which a hitman kills only those whom he believes deserve it.

But The Brave One is far grittier than a standard revenge fantasy with a femme twist, because its subtext is one of the suppression and subsequent explosion of female anger. It can be read as an analysis of what happens when women refuse to accept fear and take on the idea of fighting actively against deliberate macho intimidation.

Remarkable, too, is the film's insight into what happens to a woman's perception of the world when she has to live with fear every day. Having been brought by force into an understanding of violence, Foster's character sees New York transformed into a dingy sewer crawling with bad men who always get away with it. There's the wife-slaying businessman, the gang guys who get high on videoing beatings, the creep who kerbcrawls at night. This is Scorsese's New York, old style, and Jodie Foster is Travis Bickle, the roaming, muscular antihero who puts things to rights. The anonymity of city life makes her transgression possible, providing cover for some sickeningly realistic violence as skulls glamourlessly snap back and blood drenches the ground.

This rawness should be no big surprise for Neil Jordan fans. He's an unflinching, literate director with a long history of charting transgressive experiences. Foster, on the other hand, deserves an Oscar for The Brave One. But I doubt that'll happen. The thought of rewarding a depiction of naked female rage as it annihilates male violence might be a little too challenging for the academy.

Jordan doesn't shy away from suggesting that Foster's transformation from nice lady to assault victim to reborn dark angel of vengeance is liberating, enjoyable, even addictive. Further vindication comes with the tantalising possibility that, as in the great The Last Seduction, our heroine may walk away unpunished. Being big on anger, seeing the film was a great validation for me. Women have every reason to be angry, and it's uplifting to see this emotion brought to the surface in all its radiant power. In a memorable scene Foster sits rooted to her subway seat after wasting two rape-threatening muggers, her chest heaving and her face flickering with shock, exhilaration and cathartic fury. Only an actress of her rigour and refinement could convey how good it feels to fight back.