Neil Jordan's The Brave One stars Jodie Foster in what I believe will be an Academy Award winning performance as a woman who is the victim of an incredibly terrifying assault that leaves her boyfriend (Naveen Andrews) dead after trying unsuccessfully to defend her. The sequence is not for the squeamish. The woman feels that the police will never be able to catch the perpetrators. She comes to believe that somehow they are going to return and kill her. Her fear escalates to the point where, unwilling to wait the legal thirty day waiting period, she buys a black market gun.

Suddenly everything changes in her life and personality when she finds herself being stalked in a liquor store by a guy who just entered and shot his wife. Terrence Howard co-stars brilliantly as the officer in charge of the police investigation. In the middle of this amazingly engrossing and well-crafted picture, I caught myself wanting Jodi to get away with it. Jodi was a victim who would tolerate being a victim no longer. The feelings that this motion picture arouses are visceral and palpable. I felt watching it that if she couldn’t do the killing that had to be done, I would pick up her gun and do it for her. This movie is going to be very popular in New York.