Brave

Arguably Marillion's greatest achievement in a career of consistent lack of recognition, Brave is a remarkable piece of music with astounding lyrics. Steve Hogarth sinks into the world of an angst ridden teenager with frightening accuracy, but in the hands of Richard Stanley the idea of making a vivid visual accompaniment to the songs collapses into embarrassment. The movie looks dreadful for a start, with horridly crude special effects. The little dialogue there is is cringeable. And a relatively simple story becomes complicated and confused, with men in masks and voodoo temples wandering in and out of the story for no reason. This is just being obscure for the sake of it; there are no meanings being this chaotic mess. Even the opening sequence of the girl on the bridge is bland. It's shot in daylight...everything that could be wrong with such scenes is. Josie Ayres is suitably expressive in the lead but she clearly deserves better than this. It's childish and tries to shock, but only alienates. It all goes to show that the idea of a music video is frequently a bad one, robbing music of the richness of your own personal imaginings. And yet Marillion have done a few god 'uns, namely Kayleigh, Sugar Mice and He Knows You Know.