The Case For Revenge

Foster, the Yale grad, perhaps one of the best talkers in all of showbiz, insisted she's not advocating simple-minded revenge. She certainly would prefer that audiences leave with a higher-minded message about the cost of violence, about the fear that has lurked in the hearts of Americans ever since Sept. 11. "There's something incredibly true about the rage and fear that we don't lay claim to, but once you experience it, you know it's been there all along and everybody else walking down the street is lying to themselves," she said recently over a cup of coffee.

What Foster said is provocative and mouthy, and it was at odds with her off-screen persona, all soft and fluffy, decked out in hassle-free practical mom mode. Perhaps there's no movie star who does regular girl better than Foster, who's been famous since she was 3, and shatteringly withstood the real dark side of fame -- John Hinckley Jr.'s obsession with her. Normalness is her invisibility cloak, though her mind, as it unveils itself, is anything but ordinary, and her startlingly blue eyes, with their ability to summon acute pain, hint at the turmoil inside.

Undeniably, Foster's star power and her standing in the industry elevate "The Brave One," turning it into a movie that can appeal to both the lowbrow and the high-. It transforms a woman-in-jeopardy scenario into a twisted woman-empowerment tale. Yet her film is not the only one that touches on revenge this season. Indeed, in "Reservation Road," coming from director Terry George in October, a nerdy college professor (Joaquin Phoenix) is consumed with thoughts of revenge toward the man (Mark Ruffalo) who inadvertently killed his son in a hit-and-run accident. And then there's James Wan's "Death Sentence," about a mild-mannered ad executive (Kevin Bacon) who turns into a vigilante after his son is murdered.

Responding to terror

The ghost of 9/11 -- and the sense of powerlessness it wrought in the culture -- hovers over these movies.

"However people may object to this film, it reflects an awful lot of stuff in the world. Terror. I think people are living in a state of terror and they don't know how to respond to what is affecting their lives at the moment," said "The Brave One's" director, Neil Jordan, who also made the British gangster film "Mona Lisa" and "The Crying Game," with its IRA terrorists kidnapping a British soldier. "Whether they're right-wing or left-wing, liberal or conservative, or an ex-Trotskyite like I am, there's a deep sense of unease, not just in the United States but in Britain as well. When a doctor tries to set himself on fire in a Glasgow airport. . . ." He trailed off.