The Brave (1997)

The Brave (USA, 1997) 123 min color DIR: Johnny Depp. PROD: Charles Evans, Jr., Carroll Kemp. SCR: D.P. Depp, Johnny Depp, Paul McCudden, based on the novel by Gregory Mcdonald. MUSIC: Iggy Pop. DOP: Vilko Filac, Eugene D. Shlugleit. CAST: Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Marshall Bell, Frederic Forrest, Elpidia Carrillo, Clarence Williams III, Max Perlich, Luis Guzman, Pepe Serna. (5 Minutes To Live)

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I remember reading about this peculiar film when it played the festival circuit. It never got picked up by a distributor, despite the that it starred Johnny Depp, who also directed, and co-wrote the screenplay, based on a Gregory Mcdonald novel. Perhaps the subject matter was a turn off… and yet this man appeared in far more unconventional films like Edward Scisscorhands and Dead Man. Well, fret not… thanks to the “video underground”, you can see for yourself just why people passed on this film. (And in true bootleg fashion, the copy for review also features Spanish subtitles burned into the image.)

Depp plays a Native American living in a dirt poor reserve who agrees to appear in a snuff film in order for his family to get money to at least go elsewhere and start a brand new life. This film is a chronicle of the last few days before his fateful rendezvous on camera. Although unsurprisingly, the picture shows the hardships of this impoverished area (violence, madness), there are unexpected moments of pastoral beauty, like in these long track shots where Depp wanders through the reserve to see that there is some good in this world after all. As a director, Depp clearly took his cues from his former boss Jim Jarmusch, as the actor films himself on many an occasion wandering desolate city streets or sunbaked hills. This world he has created is truly a lonely one, especially when no one else would possibly understand the choice he is making for some good.

Later in the picture, he spends money to have a carnival on the reserve, and his act is met with suspicion and jealousy. (No one knows where he got the money to put on this event.) And before his last day on Earth, he spends an equal amount of time giving and taking pleasure and retribution.

The Brave also has some interesting casting- especially a brilliant bit from Depp’s Don Juan DeMarco co-star Marlon Brando, in long grey hair and a wheelchair, as the man who hires Depp for this strange money-making offer. Luis Guzman is a thug on the reserve, and Clarence Williams III (from TVs The Mod Squad!) is the priest to whom Depp confesses what he is about to do. While not a total success (the film lumbers along in its two hour length), The Brave is a fascinating and strangely moving film about sacrifice. 

UPDATE: this film still has yet to be released to DVD or Blu-ray in North America, however is available on home video internationally. The copy we reviewed was made available through the short-lived bootleg company 5 Minutes To Live, which sold DVD-Rs of many hard-to-find films that had yet to find a proper domestic home video release. Some of their offerings, such as Thieves Highway or California Split have since been released legitimately. But in those days, if we wanted to see something, we’d settle for a squiggly multi-generational bootleg, if no remastered edition was available.

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Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #16.