by Michel Comte – TORONTO (AFP)
Petite Jodie Foster carries a big gun as she seeks revenge in her first murderous role in “The Brave One,” but she’s the first to concede that she’s not your typical vigilante. “I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m not an action hero,” said the five foot three inch (160 cm) tall actress, who previously tried catch a serial killer in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991).
The vigilante film by Irish director Neil Jordan is reminiscent of cult classics “Death Wish” (1974) starring Charles Bronson, and “Taxi Driver” (1976) starring Robert De Niro, and of course, a much younger Foster. Shot last summer in New York, “The Brave One” premiered this week at the Toronto film festival. “It’s a very sophisticated movie that lives in a very unsophisticated genre,” said Foster, describing an “ambivalence in the characters” and violence sure to give moviegoers a “very primal experience.”
The film “is a mainstream and commercial movie that people will connect in a general way and a thinking man’s movie,” she said. It asks questions such as in post 9/11 era, “when there’s a cop on every corner and why is it that don’t I feel safe, why do I feel fearful, every inch of me is caught up in an orange or red alert,” Foster said. As well, “Who has the right to rule over mankind and who has the right to stand up when something goes wrong? Does God have the right to bring to justice or does man have the right to rule himself,” said co-star Terrence Howard. “There’s a strange dichotomy between the law of nature and the law of man and we try to walk this line. And there shouldn’t be a difference between the two,” he commented. “It’s a weird place to sit, wondering who’s right and who’s wrong.” Foster’s character Erica, a gentle New York radio talk-show host who goes on a killing spree after she is she attacked and her fiance is murdered during a walk in the park, is “absolutely beautiful and absolutely monstrous,” she said.
Female serial killers have always been an anomaly and a puzzle for law enforcement. According to academics, they are more successful, careful, precise, methodical, and quiet in committing their crimes, often using poison to kill. C. L. Kelleher and Michael Kelleher in their 1998 book “Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer” examined 100 cases since 1900 and found that female killing sprees lasted an average of eight years before being caught — double their male counterparts. Statistically, women usually account for about 15 percent of all violent crimes in the United States, but the number of crimes committed by women has increased steadily since the 1970s. Scriptwriter Susan Downey commented: “It’s very rare that women kill strangers. There’s a line in the movie that gets a laugh that ‘usually women kill people they love.’”
Tags: actress, blonde, brave one, hollywood, jodie foster, movie, movie star, vigilante
