Jodie Foster takes the lead as the 'brave one' in Neil Jordan's latest thriller. It's arguably a brave choice taking on a role that involves revenge and retribution. After all do we need another Death Wish drama?

That said, in terms of the backroom team, there's an impressive pedigree here. Joel Silver and Susan Downey are co-Producers, director of photography Philippe Rousselot has often worked with Neil Jordan and the screenplay came out of a collaboration between Roderick Taylor, Bruce A Taylor and Cynthia Mort.

Foster plays Erica Bain, a New York radio show host on leading radio station WNKW. She spends her time, recording odd day-to-day sounds of the city and then putting verbal commentaries on to them, to provide a supposedly profound social commentary in a show called "Street Walk,' which we are told is popular and has listeners.

In her spare time, Erica's going out with a male nurse (Naveen Andrews) and they're making plans for a forthcoming wedding. It's when they're all loved up that they take a doomed, night-time walk in the local park with their dog.

Initially the walk in the park doesn't seem a foolish move. There's others there, it's a nice night, the park is well lit. The dog runs after a ball, and the next minute, pandemonium strikes as the couple meet a violent trio of hoodlums in a subway. They're the victims of a 'happy slapping' clip as they get beaten up.

The beating proves fatal for David, and Erica's life is turned upside down. Visiting the cop shop, she's just another number. To feel safer, Erica buys a pistol and bullets on the black market. Rather oddly, she has no support from either her family or David's at what is a very tragic time but that wouldn't help the plot. Erica is about to go through a life-changing experience. She's armed and dangerous and soon she's going to be using these newly-found skills to calculated effect doing away with a hoodlum in a grocers. Getting a taste for this sort of thing, Erica next takes out muggers on a subway train.

As Erica gets attuned to ridding the streets of nasty folk, she befriends NYPD detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) who is trying to solve the case of the 'Vigilante killer'. Of course he has no inkling that she's behind it.

This kind of vigilante revenge was adopted when actor Charles Bronson 'cleaned up the streets' in the Death Wish trilogy. Some have compared this film also to Falling Down but Falling down is a superior film that attempts to explain how a normal mild-mannered man can flip his lid and go off the rails. In that way Jodie Foster's Erica is similar, but in other ways, this is more like the Death Wish films since the motivation is based on a violent attack changing one's character, rather than as in Falling Down, where it stems from a frustration with the system and the love of a child.

At many times in the movie, logic goes out the window. It's really rather unbelievable that a) Erica would strike up a friendship with an NYPD detective, b) that he and many others would listen to her dull drone of a show, c) that he would have the spare time to meet her so frequently and d) that it would take him so much time to suspect her of being a killer and finally e) what he does next.

It's simply too far-fetched, not to mention unsavoury to suggest that taking the law into your hands for mugging or a killing is the best form of revenge. It's particularly lacking in credibility in the final reel.

Normally you would expect Jodie Foster to pick a good'un, but this is no Silence of the Lambs and you end up wondering why Neil Jordan got involved - presumably a decent pay-cheque was the lure.