Given the amorphous but prevalent nature of the threat, he added, films that "try to adopt the kind of political critique which was occurring in the '70s -- they don't really work." According to Jordan, "The Brave One" harks back to an older genre of Dirty Harry revenge dramas, a form he labeled "brutal, nihilistic, American."
George's movie takes a different tack, and examines the cycle of revenge in the theoretically safe haven of the Connecticut suburbs. His film focuses on Phoenix's character's unquenched need for revenge, the idea that his manhood has somehow been slaughtered given his inability to protect his son, with equal weight given to the dilemma experienced by Ruffalo's character, a decent man caught in an emotional and moral vise of his own making. "Post-9/11, there's the cult of revenge," said George, who made "Hotel Rwanda." "We have to exact revenge on the other side without investigating the motives or who the other side is. That was important to me. Joaquin's character completely demonizes the perpetrator to a point when he actually meets him, he doesn't recognize him."
"Reservation Road" operates in some recognizable moral universe. The parameters and politics of "The Brave One" are less easily distilled -- not black-and-white as in most big Hollywood movies. "It wouldn't even be a quarter as polarizing if it was opening on three screens with some German actress," Foster said bluntly. "The fact that it's me and it's opening on 3,000 screens is what makes people uncomfortable liking it. It's a '70s movie and everyone is going to see it including the dumb ass who lives down the street who tortures pets."
She giggled with wicked glee, having just realized where her mouth got her: "Oh, that's a bad quote." But she wasn't derailed from the point she was trying to make.
"That's what the fear is. The fear is that we have a sophisticated movie that unsophisticated people are going to see, and how are they going to react? We had the same thing on 'Taxi Driver,' on 'Silence of the Lambs,' on 'The Accused.' That's a very similar situation. What if in the movie theater, someone claps and cheers during the rape scene? My feeling is, 'Yeah, I'm glad that I'm not there.' But I don't think it's the worst thing in the world that we recognize something in ourselves that's horrifyingly true."
