Solid proof as to why you can't take on complicated legal issues in an emotive Hollywood film.

Pedro_H

A flirtatious and mini-skirted young women who is "slightly the worse for drink and soft drugs" is gang-raped on a bar's pinball machine, but are the non active on-lookers guilty of a crime too? Inspired by a real life crime-celeb.

The wooden Kelly McGillis plays the adventurous go-getting prosecuting council and - in near perfect contrast - the versatile and talented Jodie Foster plays the central crime victim.

Foster won an Oscar for a sensitive performance of a less-than-perfect person who has had very bad things happen to her. I agree with her award, even though this is a unpleasant and ramshackle film.

*IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION STARTS*

I have to review the film as a total piece of fiction because the difference between the "inspirational" case and the one presented on celluloid are (bar the instance of unquestionable gang rape) so totally different.

Big Dan's Bar - the now closed real crime scene - was a disreputable dive ignored by everyone but hard drinking immigrant types. Not a jot like the modern preppy student bar presented in this film.

Crime investigation showed that the victims income was much boosted by social security fraud and was well known locally as "a vamp" (a very kindly way of putting it) who often turned her back on her own children in search of a party.

This isn't to diminish the fact that she was also the victim of a horrific crime - for which the actual perpetrators received appropriate sentences - but because we deserve to know these facts for comparing-and-contrasting reasons. She died soon after in an unrelated motor accident.

The case got nationwide publicity mostly because of false reporting. The bar was not crowded - there may only have been less than 12 people present - and it is possible (sparing you the technical detail) that some were present were genuinely ignorant of on-going events. It certainly didn't feature the crowds of cheering on-lookers that the media had originally seized upon.

Ironically some of the sensational pre-trial misreporting of the case - which both sides of the argument took time to dismiss for the benefit of the newspaper reading jurors - reappears in this "fictionalised" film!

*IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION ENDS*

This is, on the face of it, a simple movie with a simple message. But the more you think about it, the more you realize how false and dangerous it is. Rape is a terrible crime and my heart goes out to all that suffer it. Be they male or female. It is violence that is both physical and psychological.

However this film wants to spread the guilt to everyone short of the victims' dressmaker and this is not fair to everyday reality. Naturally the film makes it own environment - but even in this it fails to prove its own case "beyond reasonable doubt."

The Accused argues that on-lookers with no possible way of knowing a crime was about to be committed, and play no active part in it, are equally guilty by not lifting a finger to prevent it.

Crudely we have two types of "do nothings" - people that encourage vocally and those that simply do nothing but look on. How on earth could a court distinguish between these types without credible independent witnesses? Or is the victim able to divide them while being both being attacked?

There are no women (apart from the victim) present. Women are half of the population and they are present in the main bar itself - but are totally absent in the "games room" where the attack takes place. Nor is their any kind of (visible) security monitoring or CCTV security which any bar insurer would insist upon. Very - Hollywood - convenient.

To make things even more bizarre the (working) waitress friend of the victim mistakes the sexual act as consenting and takes no steps to interrupt it or call the police. Despite one of the rapists gagging Foster's mouth with his hand! Confused - I certainly am!

(Let's be frank, if that had been a male bar worker it would have been read as another crime witness that was looking the other way!)

The reason why this film was made is that it addresses rape through freak show sensation and cutting edge law. A more normal date rape - the stats for which are included in the closing titles - would be of no interest to Hollywood.

I came in to this film thinking that the mainstream couldn't take on and do justice to a tough subject like gang rape and I now know it for certain.

score 6/10

Pedro_H 11 December 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0977776/