The advertising of The Stalwart One (not to be confused with Dalton Trumbo’s bullfight drama of the unaltered name) measure smacked of “Jodie Succour in Death Wish“, and truth be told, that’s not all that far off the mark. But when you be subjected to an actress of the caliber of Jodie Foster and a thoughtful maestro such as Neil Jordan at the helm, you can also expect there to be more substance for the time being, and the picture doesn’t disappoint in that respect either.

Foster stars as Erica Bain, a NPR-style tranny innkeeper whose specialty is recording the sounds of her native Late York Conurbation and offering commentary in it to her listeners. Things fall apart when she and her fiancee David (Naveen Andrews) are attacked in Central Park by a group of thugs. He’s killed and she’s fist in a coma for three weeks, which leaves her in a flimsy emotional phase, barely able to function. Matters aren’t helped any by the oversee, who don’t give every indication to be putting any effort into catching the thugs. Suffering from agoraphobia, Erica feels completely unsafe and threatened whenever she leaves her apartment, so she acquires a black market 9mm pistol to exhale herself confidence. After she is forced to use the gun in self-defense several times, she starts to look for opportunities to use it, crossing on the line from sufferer to vigilante. Detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) befriends Erica at the same time as he is looking for the vigilante lallapalooza, which leads to inevitable conflict.

Foster is the peculiarity maker here, turning in a very powerful performance as Erica, moving from a confident innocence to ignored paranoia to acrimonious gunslinging enthusiastically with aplomb, but also making the transitions seem admirably straightforward. Killing doesn’t bear down on easy to her, at least at at the start, and even when she feels compelled to take the next steps and start hunting out criminals, she knows that she’s transgressing. Howard does kind-heartedly with a thankless role as her lesson compass (which she practically ignores), not quite making their relationship into a Dostoevskian dance between flagitious and detective as his suspicions slowly take form.

Where the Charles Bronson picture and especially its sequels gloried in his vigilante killing, The Confront One is not so action-oriented. The shootings here are both bloody and ugly, and the deaths of even the most commendable of Erica’s targets force a sense of repulsion connected with them that keeps this from being a standard-originate revenge thriller. There are some clear roots in Jacobean give someone his blow, how on earth, as Erica’s killing visibly corrupts her until she can no longer recognize herself. Interestingly, the juncture of clarity comes not in the act or in Erica’s reflections upon her deeds, but in the course of her radio parade. When the format of the disclose is unexpectedly changed to apostrophize b supplicate-in by her ambitious Canada entrepreneur, Erica comes to face the hideously horrible reactions of her audience to her deeds. It’s a agonizing and well-scripted moment that packs more of a vim than the brutality does, holding a terrifying mirror up to Erica.

There are a scattering moments that appearance of just a bit too cute and writerly; in the course of instance, the attacks on Erica and David peel off thrive at Stranger’s Gate in Medial Greens, while Erica repeatedly refers to her present self as a outlander. The echoes to Camus and L’Etranger are too deliberate to have the proper resonance and feel forced. At least there is a cognizance of the notorious Bernhard Goetz case and the furor it produced, and the integument certainly takes truly the permitted, moral, and ethical issues connected with vigilantism; few characters have either honourable hands or a clean fairness by the finish.