At first, the connection, across so many years and movies, seems startling. But if such characteristics have become typical of Foster's recent work ( Panic Room, Flightplan), Erica also recalls one of the actress' earliest and most haunting roles: young Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver. As Erica Bain, she's alternately steely and scared, restive and perplexed.

She skillfully pieces together another complicated, determined character trying to make sense of a chaotic world. This movie is terribly titled and audaciously plotted the best thing, and maybe the only good thing, about The Brave One is Jodie Foster's performance. Careful, decent Mercer ( Terrence Howard) is still mourning his recent divorce - and pursuing a murderous white executive who traffics drugs and guns and now has custody of a stepdaughter who 'knows something.' Mercer shares his pain with Erica, she doesn't quite admit her own sins, and they develop a disturbing friendship based on lies and agreements to lie. Erica has support, most preposterously in the form of a neighbor lady who virtually sanctions her violence and most frustratingly in the form of the cop on her trail. As she shoots more bad guys - all guys, all stereotypes - she grows more self-possessed and aggressive. Wherever she walks, a punk, a pimp, a thief, or some other degenerate is lurking. But when it touches you, you know it's been there all along.' The entire city becomes a mirror of Erica's vision. I always thought that fear belonged to other people, weaker people.

'It is horrible to fear the place you once loved. Where once Erica waxed poetic on her radio show about New York's variety and surprises, she now laments the menace she sees everywhere.

She makes a split-second decision, shooting the shooter before he can kill her, the unfortunate witness.

Erica buys a gun illegally - and, before she even has time to practice with targets, is caught up in a convenience store shooting. When she awakes from her coma, Erica learns that David is dead, and she's beset by fear. At the beginning of THE BRAVE ONE, radio personality Erica Bain and her perfect fiancé David ( Lost's Naveen Andrews) are brutally beaten by stereotypical-looking gangster kids.

Shes the brave one