Looks like Jodie Foster‘s finally ready to roll up her sleeves and get back to work.
For six years, the two-time Oscar winner’s practically been out of sight and–as the actress with a passion for privacy probably prefers–out of mind.
Yes, a then-pregnant Foster stepped in for an injured Nicole Kidman to beat the snot out of Jared Leto and Forest Whitaker in 2002’s The Panic Room. But director David Fincher‘s housebound thriller represented Foster‘s only starring role after 1999’s disastrous Anna and the King. She quietly lent her presence to The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and A Very Long Engagement, but neither prospered, even on the art house circuit.
Not that Foster didn’t want to get her hands dirty. Her efforts to resurrect her third directorial effort, the seemingly doomed circus drama Flora Plum, proved fruitless. And, as she tells Entertainment Weekly, she never received a script that made her toes tingle.
Either Foster‘s getting her hands on better scripts or she’s lowered her standards. How else to explain Foster‘s participation in two thrillers–Flightplan and Inside Man–scheduled for release within the span of six months?
Preparing for a Sept. 23 takeoff, Flightplan finds grieving widow Foster searching a plane for her missing daughter. Slight problem: no one recalls the girl boarding the plane, and some suspect she’s nothing more than a figment of Foster‘s imagination.
OK, let’s get this straight. Foster‘s trapped in a confined space. And she’s frantically trying to save her daughter from harm’s way. And she can’t convince anyone that her daughter exists. Sounds like Flightplan‘s Panic Room–with a hint of The Forgotten–40,000 feet above ground.
 |
Jodie Foster’s Greatest Hits* |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
Maybe Foster‘s playing it too conservative with Flightplan. She always does best when portraying strong women able and willing to fight their way out of peril. She won Oscars–for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs–doing just that. But should Foster have returned with a thriller that seemingly bears an uncanny resemblance to her last hit?
And it’s not like we’ve forgotten Foster. In fact, when it comes to Foster, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Three years passed between The Accused (1988)–the drama which allowed us to finally embrace the former child star as the strong and powerful actress we knew she would be as an adult– and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The same goes with Nell (1994) and Contact (1997), and Anna and the King (1999) and Panic Room (2002). The Taxi Driver costar always had an instinct for survival, especially as her transition from Disney darling to Oscar winner wasn’t too smooth.
If Flightplan resonates emotionally with audiences–as it did with Foster, per Premiere–then it won’t matter whether it is Panic Room onboard a 474. With Red Eye revealing that audiences are willing to endure terror in the skies four years after 9/11,Flightplan could touchdown between Panic Room‘s $96.3 million and The Forgotten‘s $67.1 million.
On paper, Inside Man (March 24) doesn’t seem anymore distinguished than Flightplan. Do we need to endure another showdown between a police officer and a bank robber during a hostage situation?
Well, consider this: Inside Man marks director Spike Lee‘s fourth collaboration with Denzel Washington, who stars as the detective. Clive Owen is the bank robber, and Foster is an attorney whose presence during the standoff only complicates matters. The talent involved makes Inside Man a tantalizing proposition, certainly more so than Washington‘s muddled John Q.
And Foster isn’t going back into seclusion. She’s attached to another thriller, The Brave One, about a woman who seeks revenge after she’s brutally attacked. Guess Foster has a Death Wish.
She also plans to return to the director’s chair with the fact-based Sugar Kings. The Robert De Niro-produced legal drama will recount the efforts of an attorney–possibly played by Foster–to prove that a sugar company treated 20,000 Jamaican workers like slaves.
Foster intends to revive Flora Plum, which originally fell apart in 2000 after Russell Crowe hurt his shoulder. Unfortunately for Foster, history repeated itself this year when she lost her cast, which included Meryl Streep, Claire Danes and Ewan McGregor, Crowe‘s replacement.
|
|
|
|
Foster, 42, tells Premiere she’s concerned about the roles she’s offered now that she’s past her prime in Hollywood’s eyes. And she also wonders whether she should have turned down certain roles in the past. Well, it’s no use worrying about that. So Foster‘s wise to look to the future. Flightplan, Inside Man and The Brave One don’t sound like they break new ground, but Foster‘s usually makes smart thrillers. If two hit it big, then Foster should continue to receive the cream of the “20 percent” of roles that she told Premiere Hollywood doles out to actress of her age. And thankfully the Flora Plum fiasco won’t deter Foster from directing again. She showed great promise with Little Man Tate. But Home for the Holidays? She owes us for that poor Thanksgiving Day meal, and Sugar Kings could be a sweet way to make amends. | |
|
||
