The Accused

The Accused is a film that by design, is not a very pleasant sit. Any film that talks about something as abhorrent and evil as gang rape is bound to make people uncomfortable, but with the passage of time and with more hindsight into how the world has adapted and grown to be more wary of this disgusting act, its aged pretty well while still acting as a film that is very indicative of its time. While it earned its fair share of flowers in the critical and award space, it feels like a movie that wouldn’t have been easy for the general public to watch, and it’s fascinating seeing how people would react to it now.

District Attorney Katherine Murphy (played by Kelly McGillis) is assigned the case of Sarah Tobias (played by Jodie Foster) who was brutally gang-raped by three men at a local bar while several people cheered on and allowed it to continue. Initially thinking she wouldn’t be a credible witness due to her history of drinking, consuming drugs, and her flirtatious attitude towards the men earlier that night, she is convinced by her superiors to appeal for a plea bargain, which deeply angers and hurts Sarah, who had some hope that Katherine would try and stick up for her. After being harassed again once the sentence is served, Katherine is convinced to truly help Sarah this time and also tries to go one step further and commit those who encouraged the act, which puts her at odds with the others in her department who feel that Sarah ‘’brought it on herself’’. Now going off on her own to see the right thing done, these two will do what they can to put those who were directly and indirectly responsible for this heinous crime in the view of the court and bring justice to someone who the world believes couldn’t have suffered this act without wanting it.

Being based on the real life 1983 gang rape incident of Cheryl Araujo, The Accused was a critical and commercial success when it was released and, while no doubt leaving a lot of people shaken by its content, also left them with an important and tragically real message about what victims of these actions have to deal with. With genuine performances, smart scripting, and a well-constructed plot, this movie is able to speak its mind without being just a statement.

With the subject matter on clear display right out of the gate, it’s no surprise that it was very difficult for this movie to get green-lit. The screenwriter for the film, Tom Topor, had a career that involved creating stories that mainly focused on courtroom dramas and stories of sexual abuse, so when he heard about Cheryl Araujo’s trial on national news, he was inspired to write a movie about it. Along with director Jonathan Kaplan, the two put in the effort to make the film very authentic to the event by capturing the grizzly and honest experience of a rape victim (even interviewing 30 rape victims as well as numerous prosecutors, defense attorneys and medical professionals), which would hopefully showcase a story about this kind of abuse front and centre without any form of sugar-coating. At the time, no portion of the media was brave enough to tackle this kind of subject matter, especially in a way that didn’t tap-dance around it (the actual ‘’scene’’ is still to this day one of the longest portrayals of that kind of violence in mainstream cinema) and they made sure to put all the focus on this event and how it impacted the victim in all manners (be it emotional or physical), which meant that no studio was willing to bite until Paramount decided to distribute, with studio executive Sherry Lansing and producer Stanley Jaffe set to produce.

It’s important to realize how controversial and daring this film was at the time because with a modern perspective, it’s actually not that meaty of a story. In terms of its presentation, delivery, and execution, it’s honestly about as bare-bones and straightforward as you could tell with this kind of courtroom drama narrative. It has no unique deviations, it carries all the cliched characters on both sides with somewhat cartoonish characteristics, it saves the big courtroom scene until the end where the audience remains unaware of who will win and how the leads will win the case, and it ends on the right note that you expect it to with just the right amount of wilful cheer and sap. With today’s media being more willing to discuss these topics and to tell them in an honest, but also creative fashion, it feels and looks pretty by-the-numbers by comparison, but the trade-off is that this film needed to play it safe, as everybody from the audience members, the production company, to even the producers were on thin ice when making this movie, and it couldn’t afford to take any risks with its execution, and therefore just focused on keeping the narrative clear, the messaging direct, and the tone uncomfortably real. While it might not be the most surprising or different, it does capture what it set out to achieve all the while still presenting something shocking and new for the time.

Much like how everyone behind-the-scenes was scared to touch this film, casting the lead was extremely difficult, as many of the women who were originally considered for the role of Sarah like Kim Basinger, Demi Moore, Jennifer Beals, Meg Tilly, Rosanna Arquette, and Kristen Davis all turned down the role because of the film’s gruesome and controversial themes. Even though Jodie Foster was eventually cast, that wasn’t a big success yet as the studios didn’t believe she was a big enough name or even sexy enough to play the character of Sarah (which is just multiple levels of ironic). Foster was also on a sabbatical from Hollywood after John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan (which was done to impress Foster after the man became obsessed with her from Taxi Driver) and after a slew of mediocre films, she was going to fully retire if this movie didn’t work out for her. Not only did it pan out much stronger than expected, but this role also won her a Best Actress Oscar, revitalized her career, and helped her get better roles in the future.

Foster is incredibly strong in this and does a great job portraying this flawed woman in a sympathetic light. It could very easily be played too over-the-top, but outside of a few choice deliveries, Foster plays this woman with enough genuine heart, spunk and vulnerability to make her feel real, and her moments of confronting this experience whether through the courtroom scene, to McGillis herself, or through the actual staged event, you are on her side throughout the whole film and feel frustrated by the blatant lack of care or belief that it was actual rape. Kelly McGillis is also pretty good as her support, providing a more subdued and traditional anchor to Foster’s wilder persona, but is still given times to showcase her talents and makes for a decent crutch to watch the movie through. The film does struggle with most of its characters feeling pretty shallow in terms of their identities and it makes them not that distinguishable outside of their goals, but both McGillis and Foster are strong enough performers to hide it enough. The side characters are where it becomes pretty noticeable, with all of them really feeling like cartoonish portrayals who only serve to prove the point of the film. The acting makes it feel real enough even amongst the folly (which more than likely comes from the 80s aesthetic), but even the more positive characters don’t have much to offer in terms of much depth.

The film definitely feels like an 80s film and for the most part, that’s not a bad thing. While it does talk about these ugly incidents with care and truth, it feels of its era through similarly handled characters, acting, presentation, production and even music. With the content involved, you’d imagine that it wouldn’t want to have anything that could be seen as overly cinematic and therefore has a look that is fairly down-to-earth, but the film still has performances that are raw, yet also a little goofy, it has a production design handled by Richard Wilcox that has a believable element of truth to it, but is still relatively clean and bright against what could be dirty and dim, and it has music composed by Brad Fiedel that feels overly scored in moments and would fit more naturally in a traditional courtroom drama film as oppose to this one, but isn’t too theatrical to the point that it feels manipulative (at least most of the time).

Miraculously, these 80s oddities don’t detract from what the movie is trying to convey because the film is written, paced, and acted in a way that still makes everything feel genuine. When the people act the way they do, they still speak like how’d you imagined these people would talk, they look how you’d expect them to look given their living standards and working pedigrees, and while the music is odd in moments, it knows when to be quiet and give a softer moment the silence it needs (the interrogation scene for Foster at the trial is a good example of this and can just rely on the performance to carry a moment).

The Accused might not be the easiest film to sit through, and it’d be completely fair if it’s something someone wouldn’t like to watch as even the cast and crew were incredibly uncomfortable when making it, but it is a film that is important to look back on and recognize for what it accomplished. Much like how Cheryl Araujo’s trial showed people the true horrors of sexual abuse and certain measures got put into places to try and protect more people, this film took a big step with a capable but otherwise basic presentation to showcase a controversial topic to audiences in a way that also portrayed said pain. Projects like Promising Young Women and I May Destroy You would’ve had more difficulty getting green-lit if this film didn’t tell its story, and it did it through intelligent truthful writing, somewhat hoaky but otherwise authentic acting, and a narrative that while bare-bones, took its inspiration from a tragic true story which helped shape this plot into one of great importance. Not something that has to be observed if you aren’t comfortable with the content, but still a pretty good film that took discomfort and weaponized it for a good cause.