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By Alison Gillmor
IT'S no surprise when the sub-verbal Charles Bronson becomes a vigilante in Death Wish. But Jodie Foster snarling, "Who's the bitch now?" before plugging some perp is startling, to say the least.
Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan is trying to make a liberal revenge film, and the results are inconsistent and frequently bizarre. It's not just that the script ties itself up in ideological knots -- it admits to that jolt of pleasure when our heroine blasts a brutal killer and then dutifully descends into a morass of guilt and tortured self-analysis.
The weak screenplay is also filled with logical improbabilities and emotional gaps. While being painfully intelligent in the small things -- this is surely the first vigilante flick to quote Emily Dickinson as the hunter heads out onto the streets -- it can be really dopey in the big things.
Foster's tempered-steel performance holds, somehow. She brings her trademark intelligence and her crystalline face -- the camera just adores her -- to the role of Erica Bain, a journalist who makes radio shows about her love affair with the city of New York.
One dark night in Central Park, Erica is badly beaten and her fiancé is killed by a vicious group of young men. Erica changes...