There are action-thriller revenge flicks, replete with cold-hearted, Charles Bronson-esque avengers kicking butt for justice.

Then there is "The Brave One."

Yes, it's full of action. Yes, it is a thriller. And yes, it seems puzzling that an acclaimed actress like Foster, 44, would add this genre pick to her platinum resume.

Yet this compelling movie about an "everyday" citizen seeking justice goes where others before it have not. As Foster told the Toronto press today, "It's a terribly sophisticated movie that lives in a very unsophisticated genre."

Directed by Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game"), Foster portrays Erica Bain, a weekend radio show host in New York City. Her life, at the onset of the film, is one many would envy. She's happily engaged and feeling secure in this sprawling city that never sleeps. Then in the blink of an eye everything Bain loves is snatched from her.

After a brutal attack in Central Park that leaves her fianc� dead and Bain beaten within an inch of her life, the hospitalized woman emerges from her tragedy a changed person. Terrified to leave her home now, Bain walks the streets of the city she once loved gripped with fear. When Bain finally does venture out alone she jumps in and out of the shadows like a ghost, unable to shake her terror, her tragedy or the sense that something terrible will befall her again.

Determined not to live in fear, Bain buys a gun and begins walking the streets at night to confront her fears. As she does, she shoots a robber in self-defense in a convenience store. In that moment Bain is transformed from defenseless victim to empowered avenger.

The vicious circle of vengeance

Determined to KO New York's crime and the merciless thugs who perpetrate it, Bain morphs before our eyes into a kick-ass vigilante (she whacks eight people). As only a deft actress like Foster can do, her character convincingly ventures into this gritty, dark and explosive underworld ready to act as judge, jury and executioner.

Compared to Robert De Niro's role in "Taxi Driver" and the "Death Wish" flicks, Foster says her character is a different person living in a different time in New York City. "There's such an interior life to this movie. Erica is conscious of what she's doing and why's she's doing it," says Foster. "The time she lives in also are different now than in New York of the '70s. Here we are in post 9/11 New York. There's a cop on every street. Then why is it I don't feel safe. Every inch of me is wrapped up in a terror alert."

Ultimately Erica's obsession to serve justice puts her on a collision course with the very men who ruined her life. It also fills this "good" citizen with the same social sickness that has scarred her assailants. As her "anonymous" vigilante justice comes under the radar of the New York Police department, Bain becomes the very thing she set out to destroy.

Not a comic book character

"The Brave One" is not about some two-dimensional buxom broad donning a comic book cape and exploding onto the screen as a napalm version Cat Woman. While masked avengers like Batman and Superman may wipe the floors with cartoon criminals, this compelling film shows what it would really take to push an ordinary person to the point of vigilantism.

Here it is a "real" woman who is the do-gooder determined to take down the thugs. She's not some super heroine on steroids. She's not some scary psycho serial killer with a penchant for bloodlust. The way Foster commits to this role, Bain is the everyday urbanite. Through no fault of her own, she ends up in the wrong place in the wrong time and sadly suffers the life-altering consequences.

"I'm not Arnold Schwarzenegger," the diminutive actress laughs. But when her character pulls out a gun and uses it, and is able to say 'you lie and you die,' she's not a ghost any longer says Foster.

When audiences look into Jodie Foster's face in "The Brave One," they see a regular woman ravaged by crime and her lust for vengeance. They see the terror that dwells in victims of all kinds in our 9/11 world. But seeing ourselves, ultimately, in Foster's baby blues is the real chill to this thriller.

"Erica lays claim to a kind of humanity she has about herself that she didn't know she had," says Foster. "At one time it is beautiful and at the same time it's monstrous.

- Constance Droganes, entertainment writer, CTV.ca