Foster seeks revenge as a serial killer in “The Brave One”

TORONTO (Hollywood Today/AFP) – Vengeance is a dish best served in theaters, says usually gentle Jodie Foster, turned serial killer for a movie. And maybe with a nice Chianti, for those who remember “Silence of the Lambs.”

Foster spoke before the premiere of her new film, “The Brave One,” where she plays a mild-mannered radio show host who goes on a killing spree after she is mugged and her fiancée murdered in a park.

Foster said her character was “”absolutely beautiful and absolutely monstrous.”

“It’s a very sophisticated movie that lives in a very unsophisticated genre,” said Foster, describing an “ambivalence in the characters” and violence designed to give moviegoers a “very primal experience.”

It asks questions such as in post 9/11 era, “when there’s a cop on every corner and why is it that don’t I feel safe, why do I feel fearful, every inch of me is caught up in an orange or red alert,” Foster said.

She said “it is a mainstream and commercial movie that people will connect in a general way and a thinking man’s movie,” she said.

Yet thinking women rarely kill strangers, which makes the story so surreal. Female serial killers have always been an anomaly and a puzzle for law enforcement.

According to academics, they are more successful, careful, precise, methodical, and quiet in committing their crimes, often using poison to kill.

C. L. Kelleher and Michael Kelleher in their 1998 book “Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer” examined 100 cases since 1900 and found that female killing sprees lasted an average of eight years before being caught — double their male counterparts.

Statistically, women usually account for about 15 percent of all violent crimes in the United States, but the number of crimes committed by women has increased steadily since the 1970s.

Scriptwriter Susan Downey commented: “It’s very rare that women kill strangers. There’s a line in the movie that gets a laugh that ‘usually women kill people they love.’”

The vigilante film by Irish director Neil Jordan is reminiscent of cult classics “Death Wish” (1974) starring Charles Bronson, and “Taxi Driver” (1976) starring Robert De Niro, and of course, a much younger Foster.

“I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m not an action hero, Foster said of her character who racks up a body count during the film, which premiered at the Toronto film festival this week.

“There’s a strange dichotomy between the law of nature and the law of man and we try to walk this line. And there shouldn’t be a difference between the two,” co-star Terrence Howard commented. “It’s a weird place to sit, wondering who’s right and who’s wrong.”