What Took Me So Long: This is another movie that has been thoroughly covered by an episode of SVU I saw once.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Jodie Foster won and Oscar for this role, which I did not know, and good for her. She's good in this playing the not-so-innocent victim. A lot of the conflict is hammed up as much as possible but it is done to get its point across. I'm happy it opted for the happy[ish] ending rather than the "the system is corrupt and broken" ending.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: My biggest regret about only having my list [currently] going back to 1987 is that I can't fully trace the evolution of a genre. Like so many other movies I've come across, I don't know where this fits in the evolution of this kind of story. I watch this and think "Boy, they sure are laying it thick about how guilty these guys are. How could it even be questionable if they are guilty?" because I've seen much more nuanced versions that have come out since. Now, I haven't seen a lot of courtroom dramas before this and certainly none with a similar subject matter so I don't have a proper context for it. Did audiences in 1988 really need it to be this cut and dry? Was the fact that she smokes a little pot enough for most people to think that she is such a loose cannon that maybe she was asking for it? I like to think that even 25 years ago this movie was talking down to the audience the way it would come off now, but maybe I'm wrong. So, what I'm trying to say is that I didn't think this was all that engaging watched in the modern context, but that may not be the movie's fault.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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