The Brave (1997) Reviews

• Everyone should watch it if they have the chance, but don't expect to go away smiling.

  Chili_Padmez2004-01-26

  Wow. I just watched The Brave. Before I saw it, I knew that it was the only film which Johnny Depp has directed. After seeing it, I can add 'unfortunately' to the beginning of the fact. In every film that he's been in, nevermind the quality of the film itself, Johnny Depp has always given a wonderful performance. As a director, he's no different. The Brave is truly outstanding. How to describe the film? It's impossibly really. All I can say is...wow. Every actor is great. It's hard to get good child actors, but here it had been done. Johnny Depp is fantastic as usual, the wife is brilliant too. I don't think that there is a single performance that I would criticise. With the film, I did something that I've never done before - I didn't move for the last 10 or 20 minutes, and when it was over, I just sat through the credits completely in shock, crying. I even stayed in front of the DVD menu for a while afterwards, completely still. How anyone can call this film 'boring' is beyond me. Heartbreaking, uncomfortable, yes, but it is far from boring. Everyone should watch The Brave if they have the chance, but don't expect to go away smiling.

• A movie worth watching!

  makent012003-10-27

  I expected this movie to be a real "stinker" based on comments I had seen. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how good a movie it is. It is a powerful story about desperate people and should have received more attention and respect than it did. The movie could use some work in places, but it deserves to be released.

• it lingers

  bijindesu22003-10-29

  I just saw this movie on DVD. As soon as I finished watching, I felt I had to see it again. The thought of being killed for money may sound bizarre, but in this movie, it's very realistic. The movie caught the mindset of a man about to be sacrified very well and you could feel the intensity. It neither condemned nor aprove his decision. But his actions all made sense, so we sympathize but not pity him. Johnny Depp played the role so well, he was able to convince us that he was just doing his best to help his beloved family.

• slow, sad film about poverty and braveness; respectable first-time directing work by Depp

  FieCrier2005-02-17

  I had read an article in a waiting room Entertainment Weekly while getting a punctured tire repaired, an article about unreleased (or little-released) films and albums by big-name directors and artists. An internet search indicates this was "Buried Treasure" by Tim Carvell in issue # 795, December 3, 2004. One of them was this film, unreleased in the US, but available on DVD in the UK. Happily I own a region-free player that does PAL-NTSC conversion (I wish they would abolish regional encoding!), and the DVD on the UK Amazon site was relatively cheap, so I ordered it. I'm surprised to see that the author of the novel this film was adapted from was the author of the Fletch series! This is entirely different. Johnny Depp plays a native American living with his wife, son, and daughter in a small trailer in a shantytown next to a garbage dump in the desert. Days seem to be spent mostly sleeping. He goes to town to apply for a job a man in a bar told him about. He goes to a pretty shady place, and we learn what the job is (reading the DVD box would tell you the same thing): to be tortured and killed (presumably on film) for $50,000. He's given some money up front (at least a couple thousand, not sure how much), and a week before he has to come back to do the job. Evidently in the book he's only offered $30,000 and given $200 up front! He goes back home, and doesn't do much initially, but then tries bonding more with his family, who he'd grown apart from while drinking. He spends the money on things that delight his kids, but seem pretty frivolous. His wife is worried he's robbed a store or done something else that will get him put in jail again. He hopes the money will help his family move up in life, and it comes at an opportune time, since the shantytown is due to be demolished. It's a bit longer than I think it need be, about two hours. However, it is well directed. I think Johnny Depp did a good job with it. Marlon Brando's role is pretty small. He'd worked with Depp before in Don Juan DeMarco (1995), quite a different movie than this one! Iggy Pop, who worked on the soundtrack has a short cameo as a man at a fiesta eating a giant drumstick.

• Beautiful movie. Depp is an excellent director andactor.

  cerebro1999-04-29

  At the first glance one could believe that "The Brave" is an action movie: a desperate man enters in the wrong place and he has to run away in order to keep himself alive. For those who love the adventures and action movies this one could be the prefect beginning for another one. Instead, the film moves into the philosophical reflection of meaning of life and death. The story is about love and struggling against fatality. Depp gives us a beautiful movie that shows an excellent director: the photography is wonderful, the first sequence is hallucinant; the only regret is that it remembers Jarmush's "Dead Man".