Sarah Tobias: What the hell are you talking about? You saw me at the hospital, what you think I asked for that? Is that what you think? "The first scream was for help. The second is for justice."What this film does well is show a different side to a rape. It shows what some believe to be true. That when a woman is
raped, it is because she is asking for it. A lot of the people in this movie do just that. She was dancing around, drinking, having a good time; so it's alright to mount her up against the pinball machine. This movie reminded me of an argument I was in one time. We were talking for awhile, and the subject got around to abortion. Seeing as I'm prochoice, I was arguing with a guy who was on the other side of the issue. I finally asked him what if a woman was raped and impregnated? Would it be okay for her to have an abortion? To this, he said "No... this women are always asking for it." I left it at that.Now to be totally honest, I didn't really care for the movie as a whole. It's weirdly dated and almost feels like a tv movie. The score is awful, and the performances, for the most part, are average at best. There is one exception and the only reason I would give this a recommendation and say it is worth watching and that is Jodie Foster. Her performance here won her an Oscar. She would go on to win another for her performance in Silence of the Lambs as well, but this was her first. I don't know if this performance was totally deserving of an Oscar, but it was pretty damn good.The Accused revolves around a woman who was gang-raped while at a bar. The men who raped her get off pretty easy and the woman's lawyer feels bad about that, and takes all the men who were cheering the rape of to court. The reasoning behind the men who raped her getting off easy is sad. Because she had a history of partying and smoking weed; she was an unreliable witness. Still I don't think the movie generates enough questions about that. To me that was the whole movie, and it just wasn't done that well.Watch it for one of Jodie Foster's career defining roles. I went into expecting an amazing movie, but I'll admit that I came away from it fairly disappointed. It isn't the masterpiece I thought it was going to be, and everything outside of Foster's performance is average at best.
January 11, 2012
