THE BRAVE (53)

Directed by: Johnny Depp

Starring: Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Elpidia Carrillo, Luis Guzman

The Pitch: A young American Indian, desperately poor and living in a shanty-town, agrees to 'star' in a snuff movie, hoping the money can save his family after he's gone.

Theo Sez: Depp's art-film apprenticeship pays dividends, both in terms of specific collaborators (an Iggy Pop score, a lengthy Kusturica-lite party sequence) and in terms of a certain sensibility, using relatively sparse dialogue and long, elaborately choreographed takes (you can see a little girl miss her cue in one of them, but it was obviously too complex to re-shoot!). This odd, downright European way of doing things may be the key to its film maudit status in its native country, though armchair socialists will say it's because it's that rare thing, an American film about poverty (did Depp always look so strikingly like Henry Fonda?) ; then again, it could be just because it doesn't particularly work as a movie, petering off into self-indulgence even before Brando's bizarre performance (wheelchair-bound, playing a harmonica and delivering lines like "It is the final measure of bravery to stand up to Death"). Slow, determinedly different, alternately effective and risible and almost completely tension-free, it's a one-way ticket to anti-climax ; but, like any film that draws out every conversation to three times its natural length, punctuating it with eerie mood music, it inevitably develops a certain power.