the avenger; In The Brave One, Jodie Foster revisits the movie that put her on the map.(Movie review)

Jodie Foster was only thirteen when a movie role changed her life forever: She played Iris, the young prostitute in Taxi Driver whose protector was De Niro's Mohawked Travis Bickle. Shockingly matter-of-fact, her performance announced the arrival of a major talent. Over the next three decades-and she still hasn't turned 45!-Foster won two Oscars as Best Actress, began directing, and became a mother. After largely dropping from view, she burst back into box-office success with Panic Room and Flightplan, which redefined her as a _lioness who'd do anything to protect her cubs. Her long career now takes a surprising turn in The Brave One, a wild and woolly reworking of Taxi Driver that brings her stardom full circle: This time, it's Foster who plays the avenger.

She stars as Erica Bain, a New York radio host whose show chronicles "a city that is disappearing before our eyes." Her own life disappears overnight when a gang attack leaves her badly beaten and her fiance (Naveen Andrews) dead. Released from the hospital, she no longer feels like the same person; fear, she says, has unleashed a stranger living within her. Erica buys a gun to hunt down the culprits, but as in a nightmare, she starts seeing violence everywhere-and begins exacting rough justice. Torn between vengeance and dread of becoming a monster, Erica is desperately alone until she bonds with a detective named Mercer (Terrence Howard). The problem? She's the vigilante he's busy hunting.

The Brave One was directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), whose tastes run toward the mythic. He treats Erica's story as a fable about terror, vengeance, and the American psyche in the wake of 9/11. It's a grand ambition, and Jordan takes it seriously, avoiding the glee of pictures like Death Wish or Kill Bill. He has ventured something new, a woman's revenge movie that doesn't shy away from deep emotion-the shame and confusion its heroine feels at her own murderous impulses.

Bathed in the teasing lights and spooky darks of Philippe Rousselot's superb cinematography, the movie clearly seeks to transform New York into the kind of expressionistic dreamscape associated with Martin Scorsese. But where Taxi Driver felt anchored in ...