And often there's a cop on the case who grows curiously close to the killer. These are the general parameters of all vengeance movies. Erica has never seen herself as capable of killing, and now she grows addicted to it, offering herself as defenseless bait for criminals and then proving how terribly mistaken they were. We've started with one of those admirable National Public Radio types whose voice is almost maddeningly sane and patient, and now we have a woman (narrating the movie, sometimes) who sounds more like she doesn't work upstairs over the saloon but she does own a piece of it. A holdup takes place, there's violence, she kills a guy to save her life, and she feels - well, how does she feel? Shaken, nauseous maybe, but certainly glad she's alive.

Not long after, she's in a late-night convenience store (note: midnight strolls in Central Park rank second only to all-night stores in their movie-crime rates). One day she buys a gun and practices on a shooting range where you can see fear turning into anger in her eyes.

Her illusion of a safe city life is destroyed. When Erica is discharged, she's shaking with terror. She's engaged to a doctor named David ( Naveen Andrews), they're in Central Park late one night, they're mugged, he's killed, and she's badly injured. Foster plays Erica, a talk jock on a New York radio station.

Jody foster the brave one