Les Accusés

I was appalled by one reviewers comments on this movie, stating that a rape victim "got what she deserved". NO one, Woman or man, deserves to be raped, violated or harmed just because they were at the wrong place.

This movie is based on a true story, and the actors were very moving. People make mistakes, someone could be that upset and choose to behave in a manner not appropriate, yet when that Person chooses to stop and say NO, then No is it. No, Stop, Don't, these words do not mean, well, I ask for it. Anyone who thinks otherwise, I feel sorry for because they are sad, lonely and deprived of self worth.

Jodi Foster Is a great actress and puts all her strength in her roles. She is very talented and she and Kelly M. made this movie. Hopefully the person that had to endure this horrid act, is going on, with strength and success.

I saw this film with my girlfriend about a year after I graduated from college, where I had lived in the alpha-male, females-as-accessories environment of a fraternity house. While I know of nothing that went on in my fraternity that compares to the horrible events of this film, I was struck that some of the beer-fueled conversations I had with my fraternity brothers could have led to the same results with more likelihood than I realized at the time (or care to admit even to this day). Suffice it to say, I cried all the way home from this movie, as much from shame as anything else.

Twelve years later, I still cannot recall being as horrifyingly struck by a scene as I was during the rape scene at the end of "The Accused" -- and I definitely do not have the stomach to see it again. The movie, in my view, is exceedingly well-acted (Foster's Oscar was well-deserved) and well-told. It has the rare gift of touching the viewer viscerally for the entire duration -- discomfort being the feeling.

This isn't virtuoso film-making like "The Godfather", but at the same time I can think of no greater compliment for a movie than it truly opened my eyes to a new perspective that I was not mature enough to grasp on my own. I left the theater a different person -- how often can that be said?

I don't watch many courtroom dramas. I've seen most of the great ones: 12 Angry Men, Witness for the Prosecution, To Kill a Mockingbird. Of all the ones that predate The Accused, Not many push as far into the red zone as this. As you go back through the decades of Hollywood cinema, films get more and more censored. In parts, The Accused is quite brutal. It would probably have seemed even more so to those who viewed it upon release 20 years ago. There are two trials in this movie. For the first, the accused persons have been charged with rape. For the second, the accused persons (different people) are charged with the crime of cheering it on (to put it in more casual terms). What the movie gives us a taste of is extremely inhumane, worse than murder even. That and two good actresses at the top of their game, results in a credible, involving courtroom drama. The screenplay is a tad over written in some places, so it's not a brilliant movie, but it is a fine specimen to sample for those who enjoy this genre.

For this role Jodie received bunch of nominations and six awards, including her first Oscar. In my opinion, her role of Nell deserves an Oscar much more than this one or her role in "Silence of the Lambs" and this is far from being her best movie, but it has really strong story and it's worth watching.

7/10

Many people think that Rosa Parks was to first to sit at the front of the bus and refuse to get up all those years ago in 1955. In fact, two other women had sat on the front of the bus and refused to get up before Rosa Parks. The problem is that one of those women was a pregnant teenager while the other was also less than the ideal poster child for a movement. A bus boycott and a cry for civil rights wasn't going to have the same impact if the impetus behind it was a person of less than stellar character. They needed a Mary Sue.

In the movie "The Accused" Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) was no Mary Sue. She was far from it, but that was not a justification for rape and the peanut galleryism that accompanied it.

Rightly or wrongly, in this society there are such things as good rape victims (meaning easy to prosecute the rapists) and bad rape victims (meaning difficult to prosecute the rapists). The good rape victim is one who is a conservatively dressed strait-laced woman minding her own business. A bad rape victim is a sexily-dressed, promiscuous woman prone to drinking and/or drugs and behaving in a provocative way.

Sarah Tobias was a bad rape victim.

She was sending all the signals that a lascivious man would need to act upon his lusts. She was scantily clad, entertaining the come-ons, giggling at everything the man said, smoking pot, drinking alcohol, and to top it all off; she did a sexy dance routine when no one else was on the dance floor. In the mind of the guy with no self-control: "she was asking for it." Whatever he, or anyone else, thought she was "asking for," she wasn't asking to be choked, pinned down, and forcibly raped by three men on a pinball machine. Only in the most depraved society would a woman be "asking" for that.

"The Accused" is a gutsy film that punches you in the gut. It equally tests your dedication to justice for Sarah and your despise of her actions leading up to the rape. "The Accused" doesn't hold back anything. It shows all the less than discretionary behavior of Sarah Tobias which makes you want to slap some sense into her at least. And it shows the despicably loathsome behavior of the rapists that make you want to protect Sarah and serve up some medieval style justice to her rapists. No, you are not spared. You will have to confront your feelings about the entire situation. And whether you feel comfortable about yourself and your opinions afterward or not, you will have some concrete thoughts and opinions.