Neil Jordan's new film is a bit of a curiousity. It presents itself as FALLING DOWN via AMERICAN BEAUTY - a thoughtful and intelligent take on the revenge/vigilante movie. Jodie Foster (looking a bit like David Bowie these days) plays a New York broadcaster of poetic radio shows about the city. She and her fiancee (Naveen Andrews, finally allowed to use his real 'Saath London' accent) are attacked by a gang of hoods in Central Park - he dies of his injuries, she survives. Psychologically damaged, she starts to dissociate and finds herself gradually falling into random vigilante acts.

The vigilante movie is rarely the most liberal of genres, however the pedigree of this one would lead you to expect a much more thoughful film. It starts out as such, but after a time it starts to enjoy it's violence too much. This isn't even Paul Schrader-lite, compared to TAXI DRIVER (also featuring a younger and more innocent Jodie Foster) the musings on the nature of the city, the self and violence are paper-thin and there merely to provide respectability for a bit of post-9/11 ' let's saddle-up and get the bad guys'. Jodie even gets to deliver some Hasta la vista, baby-style one-liners before blowing away some of the scum-bags she encounters. In the final reel the film gives up all pretence of holding a moral compass and comes to terms with it's desire just to enjoy the violence.

To be fair the technical aspects of the film are all flawless - beautifully shot, edited and scored and strong performances all round. None of this however distracted from the sense of a return to values from a previous age of cinema.

If anyone else out there has yet seen the film and wants to present a defence of what struck me as a vacuous piece of Republican wish-fullfilment, I'd be really interested to hear their point of view.

Guy Ducker

Writer / Director APERTURE