Leonardo (11) lives in a poor Mexican family, his father Rafael not even owning the farm that they work on. Their cow dies, but gives birth to a calf, which Leonardo lovingly nurtures and calls it Gitano. The land owner Alejandro writes a letter confirming that the bull belongs to Rafael. However, Alejandro dies during a race track in Europe, and the letter cannot be found, so his manager takes Gitano and intends to use him for bullfighting in an arena, where bulls are killed. Leonardo goes to Mexico City to beg the President to release Gitano, but the latter can only give him a recommendation for the owner to do so. Leonardo is too late, Gitano is sent to the arena and stabbed with the spears by the matador, but the audience cheers to pardon the bull for its resilience. Leonardo entere the ring and walks away with Gitano through the gates of the arena.
“The Brave One” is a gentle, remarkably honest and innocent little film about a friendship between a little boy (the role of a lifetime for Michel Ray, who later quit acting) and a bull, using it as a sad allegory about loss which already hits people during their childhood. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo is a step below his finest work “Roman Holiday”, lacking more finesse or cinematic knitting, settling for only a bull version of “Lassie”, yet its uncynical and humanist perspective is hard to brush off. In the opening, it is implied that Leonardo’s family is attending a funeral of his mother, and later during the stormy night, he saves a calf, whom he names Gitano, after his cow mother died, symbolically linking their two fates. The father says two sophisticated lines in two scenes to Leonardo that sum up its themes: “One’s whole life is a loss” and “It is in the nature of things that when one loves too much one loses much”. The rest of the story is good, but standard, and a little bit overstretched in the last third, dragging the pace too much with Leonardo running through the streets of Mexico City in search for the President. However, the viewers just simply have to let one’s guard down in face of such love between Leonardo and the bull, as the kid watches Gitano being forced to fight in the arena, and you would have to have a heart of stone to not shed at least a tear at the ending.
Grade:++
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