Jodie Foster is a great actress. So effortlessly can she communicate a given emotion that we learn much of this story in headshots prior to her uttering a line of dialogue. What a wonderful gift for detail!
The problem here is that she uses it to relate an inherently racist story.
Bad Jodie Foster! What were you thinking?
Here’s the premise: Put upon white chick goes around wasting some nasty colored folk.
“Wait!” say she and her fellow producers. “We cannot do that! Let’s instead have her character be deeply in love with and on the verge of marrying one of these off-white fellows!”
“Great idea! But will that be enough? I mean, the guy gets killed in the middle of Act I!
“AND we’ll have her play the Charles Bronson role in this vigilante movie as the Raskolnikov to a BLACK policeman!”
“I think we’ve got it!”
Well, no, you haven’t. It’s still a movie about a white chick who goes around wasting colored folk. Having her avenge the death of one of their own is a mighty sheer veil for those among us who would regularly celebrate the birthday of Millard Fillmore, that last great friend of slavery. (Ah! That was the day, wasn’t it?) And aren’t we fairly wise by now to the Uncle Toms/Colin Powells/Condoleezza Rices around here? What matter does it make the color of the policeman? None at all, of course.
Since it was impossible to give the lead to an actual non-white actress (evidently those races don’t go in for that sort of thing), then obviously Jodie Foster should have done the next best thing…played the role in blackface!
If anyone could pull it off, she could!