imagination

Two recently released films appear to have a lot in common. “The Brave One,” starring Jodie Foster, and “In the Valley of Elah,” starring Tommie Lee Jones, each feature main characters who lose someone they love to a murder, and on their path of responding to the crime, team up with a police detective. In both, perpetrators record and keep their crimes on cell phones, apparently oblivious to their potential as evidence, or sure of their impunity. But the similarities get thin from there on out.