(2007) Thirty years after Taxi Driver, director Neil Jordan made a companion film (though without the original's mean-streets cinematography and edgy score), starring Jodie Foster as Erica Bain, a New York City radio-show host on WNKW, 90.1 FM, who becomes "a woman with a grudge," a female vigilante.

At night on June 11th, Erica with her boyfriend, David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews), a physician, in Central Park and her dog Curtis, are attacked by three Hispanic thugs. One side of her face pulverized, she wakes up in the hospital three weeks later to discover David was beaten to death. Her recall of the assault gets confused with sexual memories with David. She fails to remember anything significant to help the two detectives assigned to the case.

Distraught and disappointed with the lack of attention being given to finding the killers, she goes to a gun shop but leaves when informed she must fill out forms for a gun license and then wait 30 days before making a purchase. Outside a man offers to sell her a 9mm automatic pistol for $1000.

An African-American woman, Erica's neighbor, says to her: "Figure out a way to live." She puts on a necklace with a cross that David had worn. While in a convenience market she witnesses a man shooting the pregnant clerk before using her gun on him, leaving the scene and removing the security tape. Erica (no scarring visible on her face) becomes a "sleepless, restless stranger" to herself; she returns to airing her views on radio but with a much edgier perspective.

Reminiscent of Bernie Goetz, the "Subway Vigilante," Erica kills two young black men on the subway train when they threaten her with a knife. "Why doesn't somebody stop me?" she asks herself, doubtful of having had to use extreme force.

After connecting the two shootings by means of ballistics, detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) and his partner assume the killings are the work of a male vigilante. Mercer is frustrated at having so far been unable to collar Murrow, a man whose wife apparently committed suicide before turning state's witness, whom Mercer strongly suspects of importing guns, drugs, and people; Mercer's ex-wife, a lawyer, declines to help him prevent the man's getting custody of the wife's daughter.

After initially turning down a request for an interview with Erica, Mercer seeks her out and during their interview reveals, off the record, his suspicions about Murrow. In the broadcast of their taped conversation Erica asks: "Why is somebody doing his job for him?"

Walking streets at night with her tape recorder and Kahr K9, wearing a black leather jacket, looking for situations where she can intervene, having become a bane to bad actors, Erica comes upon a pervert with a Vegas prostitute named Chloe held against her will for days in the backseat. After freeing Chloe, to the girl's question of who she is, Erica answers, like Odysseus who responds "No Man" when Polyphemus demands to know who has blinded him: "Nobody."

On the air Erica - "Someone is playing God out there … doing justice" - begins taking callers: "Revenge makes us feel good," says one; a female questions the self-proclaimed dispenser of death by comparing the vigilante to Americans in Iraq; yet another male claims to be the vigilante. After nearly turning herself in, Erica contacts Mercer who asks her to accompany him to the hospital to speak with Chloe ("I saw nobody"); he also returns her ring, taken from her during the assault, found in Spanish Harlem, asking her to look at a lineup to see if she can identify the man linked to the ring.

Following yet another incident, Mercer says to Erica, for whom he's developed a fondness, that he has repeatedly tested himself since he first became a cop by asking whether or not he had the courage and dedication to take in someone close to him if he knew the person had committed a crime.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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