Everything in "The Brave" is somehow false. Slow storytelling and strained dramatisation with zero motivation for audience to care for characters is an awful combination. It's brave message about the status of native American minority is lost with a stupid plot of sacrificing oneself in a snuff film.
If you watch only the first half an hour of "The Brave", you may be satisfied to see something thematic in hollowness of characters and in the situations they are introduced to audience. Even the short discussion with Marlon Brando is almost tolerable if you keep thinking this is just meta-criticism against conventions of film realism.
Only if you keep on watching... and you see the director (Johnny Depp) concentrating to his own character (Raphael) as a victim AND as a hero, you begin to see that there's another level of ethnic exploitation in these kind of indie films.
In a proper drama the characters are used to enhance each others qualities. With main actor also directing all attention is focused to his character, but mr Depp is not able to express what's happening inside his character during the oppressive and violent situations.
A stout, withdrawn character of an Indian with criminal background is a good choice for a director-actor who is used to do simple caricatures in Burton-fantasies - and even this is too much for mr Depp. Admittedly he is much more comfortable presenting ethnic antihero in "The Lone Ranger" than recycling an ethnic hero making ethnic love in ethnic sunset with an ethnic beauty (Elpidia Carrillo). YAWN!
"The Brave" is so far the only long feature film Johnny Depp has directed and I truly hope it will also be the last one.
If you watch only the first half an hour of "The Brave", you may be satisfied to see something thematic in hollowness of characters and in the situations they are introduced to audience. Even the short discussion with Marlon Brando is almost tolerable if you keep thinking this is just meta-criticism against conventions of film realism.
Only if you keep on watching... and you see the director (Johnny Depp) concentrating to his own character (Raphael) as a victim AND as a hero, you begin to see that there's another level of ethnic exploitation in these kind of indie films.
In a proper drama the characters are used to enhance each others qualities. With main actor also directing all attention is focused to his character, but mr Depp is not able to express what's happening inside his character during the oppressive and violent situations.
A stout, withdrawn character of an Indian with criminal background is a good choice for a director-actor who is used to do simple caricatures in Burton-fantasies - and even this is too much for mr Depp. Admittedly he is much more comfortable presenting ethnic antihero in "The Lone Ranger" than recycling an ethnic hero making ethnic love in ethnic sunset with an ethnic beauty (Elpidia Carrillo). YAWN!
"The Brave" is so far the only long feature film Johnny Depp has directed and I truly hope it will also be the last one.