Didn't I just see this film two weeks ago with Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence? Okay, that's not completely fair, Charles Bronson did it years earlier in Death Wish, and who know who did it before him.
Of course, if you've seen this type of film before, the predictability factor comes into play, but the bigger problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of depth to the main character. There could have been -- there even was the attempt. And perhaps Foster's voice over narration was yet another attempt, but it sounded cornier in its conciseness than profound.
Oddly enough, Terrance Howard's character (the detective) plays with great strength. I say "oddly," because he's not the main character and because the detective in the Kevin Bacon move played contrastingly flat. In fact, I'd say that Howard's detective partner (Nicky Katt), who has a total of 3 minutes screen time, gives the best lines of the film -- all comedic. The audience loved that guy. And I thought Howard was phenomenal as always; what little depth his character was given on paper, he magnified on screen.
On the whole, there were a few too many implausible moments that simply knocked me out of the movie. 1) Foster is terrified to go out, so she decides to buy a gun, she can't get one legally so she trusts some thug in a gun shop to take her to a dark alley to get an illegal one. 2) The same night she's attacked and gets to try out her new gun. (This on her first day of getting out from recovering from a previous attack). There's a couple more, but I'll stop there.
That said, the film does host some strong moments. There's a scene with Howard and Foster in a bar shot into a mirror where they're both rather scared for each other. Nicely acted, nicely written, nicely directed and shot. And there are more strong moments.
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