A film by Joseph McCarthy

A humid August morning in Brooklyn. The year is 1776 and 35,000 British regulars and Hessian mercenaries are bearing down upon George Washington's recently formed American army of 12,000 men. The Revolution could be snuffed out before it has a chance to begin. The actions of one man, General William Alexander, leading two companies totaling 400 soldiers from Maryland and Delaware, prevented a decisive British victory that day. "The Brave Man" tells his story, which is also the story of the Battle of Brooklyn, one of the bloodiest but least-known conflicts of the War for Independence.

In keeping with the revolutionary history it tells, "The Brave Man" is revolutionary in form. It was written and directed by the Brooklyn-based filmmaker Joseph McCarthy and stars Graeme Malcolm as General Alexander. Malcolm first appears as a tour guide/narrator. But gradually he takes on the traits and mannerisms of the general, and soon plunges us into a wild, imaginative retelling of the Battle of Brooklyn on the very ground where the battle was fought. Modern-day Brooklyn is no longer the forested hamlet it once was, and the sight of a Revolutionary War officer taking refuge near a Staples superstore is a jarring reminder of the history that lives beneath the city's streets. McCarthy worked carefully to match the film's locations with the actual locations of the battle. One site he did not discover was the mass grave of the more than 1500 soldiers who died in the Battle of Brooklyn; it's been paved over and forgotten, lost to time.

Shot with a limited budget and an on-the-run style, "The Brave Man" employs a fleet of red cars, an historic stone house, clever transitions between past and present, and a powerful soundtrack. More than simply reenacting history, it evokes it, asking the audience to imagine the fear, confusion and courage of the men who fought and died. As the battle develops, the motives of William Alexander also emerge. A frustrated pretender to a Scottish earldom, he has very personal and not-so-noble reasons for facing down the British. It is juxtapositions like this one -- the personal vendetta with a national cause, a contemporary street corner with a colonial cannon -- that make "The Brave Man" an unprecedented motion picture experience. It brings history alive in a way that's altogether new. www.thebraveman.com