Jodie Foster is intense in vigilante drama, but the storyline has some real problems.

{ Verdict: C+   R (Strong violence, profanity, some sexuality). Directed by Neil Jordan. Starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews. 1 hour, 48 minutes. Santa Cruz Cinema 9, 457-3500; 41st Ave. Cinemas, 479-3504; Scotts Valley Cinemas, 438-3260; Green Valley Cinemas, 761-8200. }

By CHRISTY LEMIRE
Associated Press Writer

We have long known that Jodie Foster is a formidable force. This much was obvious from "Taxi Driver," which earned her an Oscar nomination for playing a prostitute when she was just 14 years old.

Now, in "The Brave One," Foster gets to play a modern-day Travis Bickle as a woman who turns into a vigilante after an attack in Central Park leaves her seriously injured and her fiance dead.

You can kind of imagine how this transformation might occur — at first. Foster’s Erica Bain is mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. She’s also the host of a radio show that requires her to walk the streets of New York, exploring its sights and sounds and seeking out stories you don’t normally hear about, so it’s certainly possible that she’d have enough knowledge of the city to prowl about at night in search of wrongs to right.

She’s so intense and yet clearly still so shaken on the inside, she makes you believe her — or maybe, if you view Erica as the incarnation of some sort of urban gothic graphic novel heroine, it makes sense.

Either way, any semblance of plausibility gets tossed out the window and run over by a cab in the third act of this thriller from director Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game"), when the pieces snap way too conveniently into place to allow Erica to exact her ultimate revenge. (The script comes from father-and-son Roderick Taylor and Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort.)

Erica eventually goes after the trio of thugs who jumped her and her fiance (Naveen Andrews) as they were walking their dog in the park one night. (So much for Rudy Giuliani’s super-safe, Disneyfied New York.) They were sickeningly in love with each other — flashbacks show them in a glowing, overly romanticized state of rapture with Sarah McLachlan crooning in the background — but still, that’s no reason to hurt them.

When Erica is released from the hospital weeks later she returns alone to the couple’s apartment and is petrified to set foot outside again. That is, until she buys a gun, which not only makes her feel safer, it also comes in handy when she finds herself in the middle of a crime at the corner market. And again on the subway.

It doesn’t take long for her to accumulate quite a little body count, as her insomnia drives her to the city’s sidewalks — but she’s taking out the bad guys, so that’s good, right? Many New Yorkers seem to think so, as the vigilante killing spree keeps the tabloids buzzing. It also has Detective Mercer (the always engaging Terrence Howard) on her tail, even though he doesn’t realize it at first. He’s investigating these cases but he’s also become friendly with Erica in her capacity as a radio host. (Nicky Katt gets some amusing one-liners as Mercer’s partner and a much-needed source of comic relief.)

Seasoned actors Foster and Howard have a comfortable, low-key chemistry with each other. When Foster is in full-throttle vengeance mode, though, she’s fierce, almost animalistic. She turns gaunt, angular, taut.

It’s compelling to watch but it also raises the question: Why did her character have to become overly masculine to be believable as a killer? "The Brave One" seems to be implicitly saying that only men are capable of forceful action, only men are interesting at the center of a moral quandary — or at least, women who resemble men.

And that’s not very brave at all.