The World's Most Boring Vigilante

Has it been over two weeks since I last visited the LaGrange Theatre? Perhaps I should have waited another week.

Tonight, the weather took an abrupt turn into winterville. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped. Part of my drive to the theater took place behind a person barely pushing 25mph. They kicked up a lot of leaves into the beam of my headlights, which both calmed and cheered me, and counteracted my impulse to haul ass and lean on my horn.

As I parked in downtown LaGrange, I noticed that Christmas lights were all strung up on trees, signposts and storefronts. Some people don't like these early-bird Christmas decorations, but I got a happy feeling from them.

Okay, okay, enough warm and fuzzies, what were my choices tonight?

The Bourne Ultimatum - Seen It!

Hairspray - John Travolta is in it, the start time wasn't until 9:40pm, and John Travolta is in it.

Mr. Woodcock - No, I don't think so.

Which left me with:

The Brave One

Oh my. How boring was this movie? Let's put it in perspective. It wasn't quite as boring as Fracture, but it was more boring than Ocean's 13. What I'm trying to say is that the place on the shelf for The Brave One is comfortably bookended by two equally shitty and boring movies.

I mean, c'mon. Look at Jodie Foster in the poster. She looks bored, and she was paid to be in it!


Jodie Foster plays verbose public radio talk show wiener Erica Bain, who, while walking her dog in Central Park with her fiancée (played by Lost's Naveen Andrews), gets beat up by a gang of generic young toughs. She is badly hurt, but Mr. Andrews gets killed. As the violence unfolded, I thought of a more interesting scene, where instead of these toughs inflicting the beatdown, it was a bunch of fed-up former Lost fans.

"What is with the goddamn smoke monster?!!"
"Why does Locke completely change his motivation every goddamn 3rd episode?!"
"Statues with f*cking four toes??! Are you f*cking kidding me?"

Anyways, Erica Bain physically recovers, but she's all emotionally on the edge and stuff. She goes to a police station to check on the progress of the investigation of Lost guy's homicide, but is told to sit down to wait for a detective to come out.

Unfortunately, she waits too long, so like any impatient person promptly goes out and buys a gun. I tell you, the filmmakers are onto something with this -- it's a surefire solution for a long wait, whether at the ATM machine or in the doctor's office.

She puts on dead Lost guy's cross necklace and then ever-so-slowly gets to the killin' of people. One thing I noticed in the poster was that she's not wearing a cross necklace. What is that, a Freemason symbol?



Honestly, a lot of the killings are done purely in self-defense. The first occurs in a convenience store where a guy is going to shoot her if she doesn't defend herself. The second is on a subway where a guy is going to knife her if she doesn't defend herself. Really, Ms. Bain? You expect me to call that vigilantism? I think not.

There are absolutely no shades of gray in this film. It's made clear to the viewers that everyone killed by Bain had it coming. The main dramatic conflict involves us waiting for Bain to realize she is above the stupid law.

Terrence Howard plays Detective Mercer, who eventually figures out Bain is the one doing all the "vigilante" killings. Yes, he's fine with what Ms. Bain is doing, thank you for asking.

Okay, so the female Ira Glass that is Erica Bain has been killing loads of one-dimensionally evil New Yorkers, but what about those young toughs that started the whole movie on its boring, mopey course?

Ahh, Detective Mercer luckily gets a tip which leads to the gang. Bain is brought in to identify the suspect. BUT SHE DOESN'T. Oh no. She is going to kill the S.O.B.

As she pulls up to the guy's apartment building, I got to thinking, I wonder what happened to her dog that she was walking at the start of the film. Sure enough, we see one of the young toughs holding it by a leash outside. Those goddamn dog stealers!

Bang, she kills the guy with her dog. Bang, she kills another guy. She goes for one more guy but he gets the drop on her. Detective Mercer busts in and now once again the "good guys" are in command. So, what does Mercer do?

Of course, he gives his gun to Bain to shoot the guy lying on the floor. Which she does. Then Mercer has her shoot him in the arm with her gun. You see, he realizes that Bain is doing some damn fine work, and he's going to frame the toughs for Bain's previous murders, and make it look like they killed themselves, or shot at him, or something. The important thing is, this is the good kind of frameup, folks, not the bad kind.

So he tells her to skedaddle, and she does. Her dog runs after her. I'm not kidding. Her dog runs after her. So everything ends okay. Oh wait, there's one more thing that could make this ending even a little bit more perfect.

A Sarah McLachlan song kicks in.

Oh, mercy.