Avengers die, funeral fun

TWO films opening this week -- The Brave One and Red Road -- deal with female avengers.

The Brave One (MA15+) 3 stars National release Red Road (R) 3½ stars Limited release Death at a Funeral (M) 4 stars National release

TWO of the films opening this week -- The Brave One, from the US, which is directed by Neil Jordan, an Irishman, and the British Red Road, which is based on characters developed by two Danish writers -- deal with female avengers. Outside the realm of the exploitation film, such as Ms.45, made by Abel Ferrara in 1981, there aren't a great many films about women obsessed with revenge; Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) is one of the few.

The Brave One is a reworking of the Charles Bronson thriller Death Wish with elements of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver thrown in. The Bronson film, directed by Englishman Michael Winner, was made in 1974 in the dying days of the Nixon presidency. Watergate was dominating the news along with the unpopular war in Vietnam. Now we have another era dominated by an unpopular war and a lame duck president, and exactly the same themes are revisited.

Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain, a New York radio broadcaster whose world is shattered when her fiance (Naveen Andrews) is beaten to death by three thugs one night as the couple (ill-advisedly) walk their dog in Central Park. She's badly hurt, but she survives, though she is no longer the person she was. Just like Bronson before her (whose wife was murdered and daughter raped, also by three thugs), she buys a gun and starts using it on robbers, drug dealers and other low-life before she finally tracks down the killers who changed her life.

Quite apart from the inappropriateness of the title (there's nothing brave about Foster's character), the film is an alarming throwback to the vigilante genre. For a while, Jordan seems to be attempting to reinvent the material in interesting ways; Foster's Erica becomes almost a schizophrenic character, a stranger to herself. The sympathetic cop (Terrence Howard) with whom she bonds is also given more resonance than is usual in this kind of film.

But in the end Jordan blows it big time. The conclusion is not only wildly improbable, given what precedes it, it's also a cop-out. As a result, despite the skill Foster brings to her performance, which at times is heartbreakingly good, and the polish Jordan brings to the well-directed drama, the film leaves an ugly taste in the mouth.

***IN first-time director Andrea Arnold's Red Road, which is set in Glasgow, Kate Dickie plays Jackie, who works for a private security firm and monitors the dozens of surveillance cameras that cover a working-class area of the city.

Apart from occasional loveless sex in a car with a colleague, she seems to be alone and lonely, but she becomes obsessed with a man she sees via the cameras. Clyde (Tony Curran) appears to be an ex-convict with some, for a long time withheld, connection to Kate, and for much of the film Arnold is content to observe her protagonist almost as clinically as Kate, in turn, observes Clyde.

This is minimalist cinema at its most riveting, but when the film tips into a revenge movie it, like The Brave One, loses the plot. I found the film's conclusion, which includes an unusually explicit sexual encounter, completely unbelievable and a negation of the character of Kate, which Arnold had taken so much trouble, until then, to establish.

***AS an antidote to these grim sagas of revenge and death, it was a significant relief to turn to Death at a Funeral, a beautifully written and acted British comedy that triumphantly brings genuine laughs back to the cinema. Dean Craig's very clever screenplay is an ensemble piece. A funeral is taking place at a private house in the English countryside, organised by the deceased's indecisive son, Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen), who is nervously preparing to deliver the eulogy even though he knows everyone would prefer it be done by his brother, Robert (Rupert Graves), a New York-based writer.

In attendance are Daniel's widowed mother (Jane Asher), his anxious wife (Keeley Hawes) and the dead man's pompous brother (Peter Egan). The latter's children have come, too: Martha (Daisy Donovan) has brought her boyfriend, Simon (Alan Tudyk), even though her father disapproves of him. They're accompanied by Martha's disreputable brother, Troy (Kris Marshall), who manufactures hallucinogenic drugs in his kitchen. When Simon inadvertently takes what he thinks is Valium but is actually one of Troy's concoctions, the laughs begin. (Tudyk is brilliantly funny as he goes off the wall.)

It's a film packed with funny elements: the wrong body is delivered by the funeral home; Justin (Ewen Bremner), with whom Martha has had a presumably unfortunate one-night stand, pesters her constantly; Howard (Andy Nyman) has difficulties dealing with incontinent Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan) and, to top it all, a stranger (Peter Dinklage) arrives with a revelation that results in chaotic attempts at subterfuge.

Director Frank Oz, triumphantly erasing memories of his disastrous last film, The Stepford Wives, handles this quintessentially British material with aplomb. The cast is flawless, their comedy timing impeccable. Though modest in many ways, this is the funniest film to reach our cinemas in a long time.