It does exactly what such movies do, and then it does it some more, and then it stops. It almost leads you to expect a twist, and then the twist is that there is no twist.

The violence in Jordan’s film, like the violence (and sex) in Cronenberg’s, may shock or startle, but the plot seems rigorously calculated never to surprise. What Neil Jordan’s The Brave One shares with the other films mentioned above is a rigid adherence to convention more conventional than all but the most mechanical instances of its genre. It’s a bit like a Calvin & Hobbes strip from 15 years ago, in which Calvin follows up a grotesque, avant-garde snow sculpture ridiculing bourgeois tastes with a very traditional snowman representing, Calvin says, “popular nostalgia for the simple values of rural America 50 years ago.” Even so, he claims his traditional snowman was “ very avant-garde.” How’s that? Hobbes wonders. Every once in a while a movie comes along from some interesting filmmaker, like A History of Violence or the The Astronaut Farmer, that leaves the viewer squinting at something that appears so straightforward, you wonder whether the makers are entirely serious.

Film the brave one soundtrack