Sep 14, 2007

Review of a Movie I Ain't Gonna See

The Brave One, with Jodie Foster, sounds like exactly the kind of movie nobody needs. Now that NY is the safest city on Earth, at least when it comes to crime, do we need a revenge fantasy movie a la Charles Bronson? I don't think so.
Horrible things happen to Jodie Foster in our beautiful town full of rodents and then she seeks revenge. Why would I want to see that?
My idea of a more realistic avenging movie in NYC goes like this:
Jodie Foster, playing me, is horribly annoyed by a number of things. Anytime those things cross her path, she blows them up.
• She vanquishes the entire rat population of NY singlehandedly by blowing up the infrastructure of the city, kinda like Con Edison. When the roaches see this, they decide to decamp by themselves.
• Every time a homeless person overturns a garbage can, Jodie makes sure, firepower in hand, that said homeless puts everything back and in the order in which they found it.
• As she walks into Bloomingdale's in Soho, she finishes off all the brain dead nubile idiots who love Juicy Couture, leaving bloodied, obscenely expensive schmattes in her wake.
• No taxi driver dares honk his horn any more, for fear of Jodie. Nobody honks and nobody blares his stupid music out his car windows. Jodie only allows blasters to live if they blast Mahler.
• Jodie has rounded up every SUV in town and dumped them all in the East River, drivers inside.
• Because she is a model citizen, she is helping Mayor Mike to get the congestion tax approved, by way of threatening a clean shot to the head to anyone that objects.
• She blows up Magnolia Bakery at the height of the inexplicable queue, just because. Next in her line of fire is the Meatpacking District (Only Bodum will be spared).
• New condos that promise wine cellars and pilates studios and screening rooms and zen gardens and a private fridge for your special gin, BAM!
• People who talk even during the previews at the movies are silenced -- with a silencer.
In fact, so many things annoy Jodie, that several sequels are in the works.

I have a theory about Jodie Foster. It goes like this. Since we all know she is gay, and since every attempt to cast her as the object of someone's affections has been historically disastrous (Nell. Sommersby. Maverick. Anna and the King: need I say more?), and since she does radiate intelligence and is a blonde and Hollywood does not quite know what to do when both converge, she is now a specialist in playing the tough, steely broad, alone against the world. Considering she is also in her mid-forties, it is a testament to her staying power that she is still working. Yet, like a Super Nun, no sex for her: Silence of the Lambs, Flightplan, Contact, Panic Room, Inside Man. You could pretty much take any male action star and substitute him for her and the movies would still work (except for Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal Lecter has a crush on her). She is, in the movies, like a man with breasts. Perhaps this is Hollywood's subconscious punishment for her gayness. Or perhaps I have too much time on my hands.

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