This movie just seemed really forced. Forced plot devices, forced dialogue, it just did not seem natural at all. Everybody talks like they are 'in' on the script. Jodie Foster does an excellent job, as always, but there is just too much self-conscious narrative to save this.
Furthermore I really don't understand why the protagonist was labeled as a vigilante. She was nothing of a kind. Everything she did was in pure self defence. First she kills a guy who is hunting her down with a gun in a grocery store, then she kills 2 guys in the subway who put a gun and a knife to her throat and try to rape her, and so on. What's vigilante about that? The only thing she did wrong was to get an unlicensed weapon, other than that she was completely justified in doing all the killings - if somebody points a gun in your direction with an intent to kill, you have to protect yourself. Even in New York.
May be the movie would be better if it had a better social commentary on how women are in constant danger of violence in our society, regular and sexual, and how they are criminalized if they try to use force to protect themselves, but the movie never got that deep
Furthermore I really don't understand why the protagonist was labeled as a vigilante. She was nothing of a kind. Everything she did was in pure self defence. First she kills a guy who is hunting her down with a gun in a grocery store, then she kills 2 guys in the subway who put a gun and a knife to her throat and try to rape her, and so on. What's vigilante about that? The only thing she did wrong was to get an unlicensed weapon, other than that she was completely justified in doing all the killings - if somebody points a gun in your direction with an intent to kill, you have to protect yourself. Even in New York.
May be the movie would be better if it had a better social commentary on how women are in constant danger of violence in our society, regular and sexual, and how they are criminalized if they try to use force to protect themselves, but the movie never got that deep