BRAVEN (2018)

Genre: Action
Director: Lin Oeding
Cast: Jason Momoa, Stephen Lang, Zahn McClarnon, Garret Dillahunt, Jill Wagner
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Coarse Language and Violence)
Released By: Shaw Organisation 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 22 February 2018

Synopsis: When Joe Braven (Jason Momoa), a humble logger residing along the U.S./Canada border is confronted by a group of deadly drug runners who have stashed heroin in his secluded cabin in the mountains, he must do everything in his power to protect his family. Little do the elite drug runners know the unassuming man they’ve encountered has an impressive bite colliding two dynamic forces – one fighting for the lives of his family, the other for the love of the kill.

Movie Review:

In between reprising his role as Aquaman in the DC Extended Universe, Jason Momoa seems all too willing to demonstrate that he is perfectly capable of playing ordinary real-life heroes that do not have any superpowers. His latest, which he also produced, sees the hulking actor assume the titular role of a hardworking logger, who is forced to defend his and his family’s lives against a band of ruthless drug traffickers up in the snow-covered woods of rural Newfoundland.

Contrary to expectation, Momoa’s Joe Braven isn’t possessed with a very specific set of skills with which he dispatches his enemies; instead, veteran stunt coordinator turned first-time director Lin Oeding takes care to maintain his lead character’s Everyman persona, relying solely on the strength of his bare fists as well as his quick-witted ways to take down his opponents. That’s not to say the action isn’t exciting; in fact, the stripped-down fights and run-and-gun clashes feel like the real deal, upping the stakes involved for both the performers and us alike.

Just as surprisingly, the film doesn’t rush into the action without first properly setting up its characters or the circumstances they find themselves in. The first act clearly establishes Joe as the caring owner-operator of a lumberjack business, who offers up his mountain cabin to his co-worker Weston (Brendan Fletcher) if the latter needed some place to sit out an oncoming winter storm in the middle of a logging run. Alas Weston turns out to be a drug runner, and after skidding off the road at night during a snowfall, he decides to hide the bags of heroin he’s been transporting in Joe’s cabin.

While Weston is off on the drive, Joe returns home to find his father Linden (Stephen Lang) exhibiting growing signs of dementia after a workplace accident a year ago: more than losing track of day-to-day tasks, Linden wanders into a local bar in town and mistakes a female stranger for his late wife, getting into an altercation with the lady’s husband and her other male friends. On Joe’s wife Stephanie’s (Jill Wagner) urging, Joe brings his father out to the cabin to talk about getting proper care at a nursing home, although that sojourn proves complicating for two reasons – one, Joe finds out at the cabin that his young daughter Charlotte (Sasha Rosoff) had snuck into the back of his truck and followed them up; and two, a group of armed men are closing in to retrieve the bag of drugs stashed away in the cabin shed.

It’s not difficult to guess how things go down after that, but even so, Oeding and his screenwriter Thomas Pa’a Sibbett stage the proceedings with clarity, confidence and even panache. Refusing to reduce their movie to a ‘home invasion’, they have Joe break out on an ATV after the first shootout, and with Charlotte along for the ride, split the subsequent action into three theatres – one with Joe on foot in the deep snow, one with Linden keeping watch at the cabin, and one with Charlotte making her way to higher ground in order to get outside help. Except for the finale involving a bear trap and a cliff, each one of the fights is choreographed and staged with utmost attention to realism, especially as Joe and Linden depend on their resourcefulness with axes, metal rods, hunting bows and red-hot tongs to overpower their foes.

As throwaway as it may look, ‘Braven’ is indeed a surprisingly solid, satisfying genre picture whose plotting gets you invested in its characters before unleashing the mano-a-mano action you’re probably expecting. In turn, Momoa gives a compelling performance that neatly balances strength, vulnerability and resolve, while avoiding the sort of macho posturing that he tends to do in his superhero alter-ego. Momoa has a wonderful supporting act in Lang, who gives a raw, vivid portrayal of a strong, silent male type struggling to come to terms with his deteriorating mental state. And though it is all too obvious why the filmmakers had chosen such a grammatically incorrect word for the title of their movie as well as the name of their characters, it is testament to their achievement that ‘Braven’ actually ends up sounding a lot more convincing after the movie than before. 

Movie Rating:

(Jason 'Aquaman' Momoa makes a convincing and even compelling Everyman in this brutally efficient survival thriller that is surprisingly character-driven)

Review by Gabriel Chong