Jodie Foster

The Accused

Genre/Type:  Message Movie, Courtroom Drama, Drama
MPAA Rating:   R
Major Cast:   Jodie Foster, Kelly McGillis
Director:   Jonathan Kaplan
Plot Summary: Based on a real-life 1983 incident, The Accused tells the story of Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster), a working-class party girl who likes to live it up with her friends and flirt hard with the guys. After a fight with her boyfriend, she heads to a local bar to cool down — and after a few drinks, plus some dancing and flirting, she finds herself thrown on top of a pinball machine, being gang-raped by a bunch of locals, while others watch and cheer the proceedings. District attorney Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis) takes Sarah's case but quickly negotiates a plea bargain in which the attackers' charges are reduced to reckless endangerment. Her reason: defense attorneys could use Sarah's not-so-pretty past to paint her as a slut who was "asking for it" and get their clients off completely. But a stunned Sarah accuses Murphy of selling her out, and when the lawyer sees how the incident continues to destroy Sarah's life, she decides she must seek true justice. This time, she goes after the crowd of onlookers for "criminal solicitation" — egging the rapists on. The subject matter is provocative on several counts, from the novel notion of prosecuting bystanders to the message that Sarah did not "deserve" what she got, no matter how questionable her character or behavior in other contexts. Foster won the Best Actress Oscar for her emotional, complex performance; her ability to show Sarah's deep pain under the hard-edged exterior, and her interaction with McGillis's conscience-plagued attorney, transform what could have been a tabloid shocker into a riveting moral drama. -- Don Kaye ( All Movie Guide )