Plot
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 and 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 "asking for it," getting 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" -- those who were egging the rapists on. Foster won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. ~ Don Kaye, RoviReview
Jonathan Kaplan's fact-based drama, one of the most thoughtful examinations of the crime of rape on film, features an Academy award-winning performance by Jodie Foster. An account of the gang rape of a free-living waitress (Foster) by some of the male patrons of a dive bar, the film exposes the manner in which the pre-feminist blame-the-victim attitude toward rape victims, still predominant in many areas, is also hard-wired into the legal system. A more subtle secondary theme concerns the role of social class, and the difficulty experienced by the working-class victim in being heard, especially by her well-bred attorney (Kelly McGillis). When, driven by her client's rage, the lawyer finally brings the rape's bystanders to trial, the film means to implicate a society which has always maintained an unwritten code which would shrug off such behavior. Tom Topor's low-key script largely avoids melodrama, following the waitress' case through the various stages of the victim services and legal grievance system, where the perfunctory treatment she's accorded explains her growing anger, and desire for retribution. While McGillis seems a bit slow and stolid to be playing a litigator, Foster is brilliant as this troubled, nearly inarticulate woman who slowly gains an awareness that nothing she did could possibly have justified the ordeal she was forced to endure. ~ Michael Costello, RoviCast
- Kelly McGillis - Kathryn Murphy
- Jodie Foster - Sarah Tobias
- Bernie Coulson - Kenneth Joyce
- Leo Rossi - Cliff Albrecht
- Ann Hearn - Sally Frazer
Credit
Sheila Haley - Art Director, Jack Roe - Associate Producer, Sally Dennison - Casting, Julie Selzer - Casting, Michelle Allen - Casting, Stanley Jaffe - Co-producer, Sherry Lansing - Co-producer, Trish Keating - Costume Designer, David W. Rose - First Assistant Director, Jonathan Kaplan - Director, O. Nicholas Brown - Editor, Jerry Greenberg - Editor, Brad Fiedel - Composer (Music Score), Rob Young - Musical Direction/Supervision, Richard Kent Wilcox - Production Designer, Ralf Bode - Cinematographer, Barry W. Brolly - Set Designer, Rob Young - Sound/Sound Designer, Kerrie Cullen - Stunts, Tom Topor - Screenwriter| The Accused (1948 Film), The Accursed (1958 Film) | |
| The Accusing Finger (1936 Film), The Ace of Cads (1926 Film) |
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