by Ginger Voight

Created on: April 05, 2008   Last Updated: April 06, 2010

The main appeal of this modern version of Death Wish is the gender bending twist of having a woman behind the gun. Typically in our society women are socialized to be the lesser aggressive of the two sexes. This is evident when you take a self defense class and the fist order of business is teaching the woman to yell "NO" at any and all attacks against her person.

We need to be taught to vocalize what is simply understood in regards to the opposite sex.

So to see a woman who was victimized fight back isn't just "revenge porn" as has been stated by other critics. It's a matter of a victim facing her fear and taking her power back in an unconventional, unexpected and provocative way.

Our movie opens with Erica Bane (Jodie Foster) on the air, a radio personality who walks the streets and reports on the ever changing kaleidoscope of New York City - the "safest big city" in the world. She loves her city and her fiance David, played by Lost's Naveen Andrews.

That is until they take a wrong turn at a place called "Stranger's Gate" (Central Park?), where they happen upon four gang youth who proceed to taunt them, steal their dog and ultimately beat them severely all the while videotaping their crime.

The beating is pretty relentless and brutal, and while you're watching this - especially if you've ever felt helpless or victimized - you are immediately on board with Erica's character.

When she awakes three weeks later and learns her beloved David has already been buried, something in her is dead and buried with him.

What remains is so paralyzed by fear that she's a shell of her former self.

It is out of this fear - and subsequent desperation - that she purchases an illegal hand gun. Whether she ever intended to use it at this point, I'm not sure. I believe she was so truly petrified that without this protection, she would literally not survive.

I don't remember much of "Death Wish", but the difference for me was that Erica Bane did not intentionally go out and seek out vigilante situations. In fact, the very first person she kills is a situation where she literally had no other way to handle it but to kill or be killed.

The character exploration of her devolving into this stranger she does not recognize was very well done because it's balanced by exploring the moral and steadfast character of Detective Mercer, as played by Terrence Howard. He's by the book, she walks the line - and yet they share a mutual respect and admiration.

It's through their emerging relationship we grapple with right and wrong, black and white (figuratively) and ultimately - what we as humans are truly capable of.

Revenge porn? Not necessarily. I just think it was an unapologetic film that taps into something dark and base in our nature - that survivalist instinct that answers the question of, "if it's me or you?" with "it's going to be you." It could not have done this successfully without being "in your face" - an unrelenting punch in the gut.

I personally liked it, despite that it follows the traditional movie logic that in order for a woman to be powerful she has to, in some way, be a criminal. But the climax where she faces off with one of her terrorists was quite satisfying indeed.

B+

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