It’s no surprise that the events of 9/11 changed the world. We who live in the U.S., protected from the worst horrors of two worlds wars, realized that a whole new war could – and suddenly had been – brought to our shores.

That realization is what gives “The Brave One,” the revenge flick starring Jodie Foster that opened Friday, special meaning. The whole film can be seen in that context, as an ordinary person’s realization that the world isn’t as safe she had previously thought.

Why then, though, is the film so similar to Michael Winner’s 1974 film “Death Wish”? If “The Brave One” – and I’m still not sure what that title is supposed to mean – were trying merely to make a statement about the paralyzing nature of fear, that would be one thing. Following 9/11, politicians have made entire careers on playing up that fear. And we in the media have written story after story that make the danger underlying that fear seem more real than it truly is.

Can you say weapons of mass destruction?

But “The Brave One” uses the fear as a starting point. It devolves quickly enough into a glorification of vigilantism. It plays up the unresponsiveness of the legal system, how technicalities – otherwise known as Constitutional rights – often protect villains from prosecution. And it shows how one “brave” citizen takes matters into her own hands.

Not that it’s an easy decision. She does agonize over putting bullets into various body parts (though mainly heads). Yet she gets hold of a pistol fairly easily, and she learns to use it with less than five seconds of instruction – both circumstances that aren’t particularly believable.

Then, of course, the gun initially saves her life. Next, it saves her from rape – and possibly worse. So the world seems to be telling her something: Use the gun to right the wrongs that have been done to you and yours.

That’s disturbing. And easy. In the end, “The Brave One” is a well-made, well-acted (by Foster and by Terrence Howard as a homicide investigator) bit of fear-mongering manipulation that is as wrong-headed as it is cynical about the very nature of life itself.

Sure there’s a lot to be afraid of in today’s world. But the brave person endures despite such fear. He/she doesn’t give in to it and, in the process, become a part of the problem.

That would be a brave position for a film to take. But it likely wouldn’t make any money. Gunplay sells. Common sense doesn’t.

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