So I saw it last week and I’m only reviewing it now. Bite me.
The movie is a classic vigilante story, but Jodie Foster takes it up a notch with an artist’s perspective on the whole experience. Foster plays an aural artist with a radio show highlighting the sounds of New York. But after a tragic attack leaves her fiancé dead, she buys a gun, learns the very, VERY, basic mechanics of it’s operation and tries to recover her life. Several gunshots and a near romantic relationship with a cop looking for the vigilante and you’ve got a very terse drama with good acting.
Jodie Foster is SHORT! I didn’t realize how short she was mainly because I never considered Terrence Howard a tall guy. I’m pretty sure they didn’t do any Green Mile magic (have Tom Hanks and David Morse walk in a ditch while Michael Clarke Duncan towers over them), but I couldn’t verify that.
Jodie Foster made some interesting comments after the movie was released in an Entertainment Weekly interview. Mainly she called American audiences “unsophisticated”* because they cheered when she gets her revenge. As someone who’s been forced to take several art classes, I can understand the “spin” they try to put on the classic vigilante tale, but frankly you just can’t do that. Audiences period will always have that gut reaction to vigilante justice whether they want to or not. It’s what people do with that visceral visual input afterwards that makes a person “sophisticated” or not.
I had a gut reaction and thought I heard Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay and Silent Bob) as one of the gang members, but the credits said otherwise….oh well…guess I’m still crazy.
* Sophisticated people go to art auctions. Rednecks, we have yard sales. (Jeff Foxworthy).
Having not seen the movie it’s a little hard for me to say but I think I agree with Jodie Foster. Rather than seeing the different layers and alternate perspectives (i.e. a woman loses who she is as she’s caught up in the violence of her actions, a moment of tragedy rather than triumph) American audience tend to just look on the surface (“Woo hoo! Violence!”). It’s pretty sad actually. I think I may want to rent this one so I don’t get annoyed with people cheering at parts I believe are supposed to be sad and moving.
Actually I’m pretty sure the only people who “cheered” when she got her revenge were my dad and his friend because they were being deliberately anti-Jodi. I would recommend that everybody see the movie in theatres.