Maybe it was the roll on effect of watching these three in one sitting, but by the time I got to this one, I really found it hard to endure. Once again Miss Temple is placed in questionable adult care, a criminal and his girl trying their best to go straight. It has a lot more in the way of story than the other two I watched this night; and for an early-30s production it’s perhaps surprising how harshly it confronts reality.

But again, it’s just not a Shirley Temple movie … whatever that is. Aside from Stand Up and Cheer, which as I’ve already said was entertaining for many reasons other than Shirley, I’ve not yet seen anything to change my view of her as really quite far from talented. She’s adorable, it’s true; and she hits her marks and notes etc like a seasoned pro. But there’s absolutely nothing natural about her performances, and it’s frequently so controlled and choreographed as to be frankly unsettling. In a stylised musical like Stand Up it works perfectly … but in a “real” movie like this, alongside Carole Lombard and Gary Cooper? It really jars, I’m afraid. The whole movie is just a real downer.

Like Duel, I have meant to watch this movie so many times it’s ridiculous. I stand there with the disc in my hand – I go online and read reviews which never really contain any info that makes me desperate to watch it – finally this time I just found myself saying to myself, “What the f*ck are you doing? It’s Spielberg, you’re a film nerd, and you’ve not seen it yet!” LOL. Well, that worked – and putting it in a double bill with Duel didn’t hurt either, it’s certainly recommended.

And Spielberg it really is. On the technical side of things, this film is nothing short of flawless. Though Billy Goldenberg did a fine job with the score for Duel, it’s here finally that the John Williams relationship began, and boy, it’s there if anywhere, when those strings come in over the main title, that you hear an artist who started as brilliant as he has continued. The film is also lovingly, beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond.

But while I really wanted to love this movie, in the end I felt it dragged far too much. It’s very scattered in what it’s trying to say – the public adulation of the couple, Hawn in particular, resembling Bonnie and Clyde among many others, the fleeting digs at the media done better in Natural Born Killers (public adulation of the criminals there too of course), the baby storyline and other things resembling the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. In other words, it’s all very much been done better elsewhere before and since. You can’t deny the perfect blending of skill and fun though, and it is a large enough part of any understanding of Spielberg to again make me ashamed I didn’t see it sooner.

Though I’ve really loved a few of Neil Jordan’s movies – The End of the Affair in particular, Interview with the Vampire of course … looking at his filmography now I realise I’ve actually missed quite a few, lol – I really came to this expecting nothing more than the latest perfect Jodie Foster performance. This used to be an event, of course, in the decade leading up to Panic Room a Jodie movie was really a Jodie Movie. Now, she almost religiously gets Oscar buzz on a yearly basis (no luck yet), and like Dakota Fanning, Johnny Depp – I’m sure there are others – more often than not, the greatness of the performance is almost “boringly” so.

But this performance honestly surprised me. Foster is known for playing strong women, of course, and her roles have almost without exception always had something powerful to say about women, about the treatment, the history, the everything of women. It’s almost bizarre to find her in this movie once you find out what kind of movie it is. I read recently about how upset she’d been by Sin City and I totally got where she was coming from, but there are many ways in which The Brave One is not so different from that comic book burst of ultraviolence. What makes Foster’s performance so surprising is the weakness she manages to show us at times. It’s a revenge movie, so of course there’s still a lot of strength. It’s called The Brave One, d’uh. But it’s the other, quieter stuff – the way she approaches the police desk after first getting the courage to leave her apartment at the start, for instance – that really made an impression on me.

There are moments here where I had to actually double check that it wasn’t based on a graphic novel or comic, in fact – the moment, for instance, where her “voiceover” first creeps in as she leaves the subway, “Why aren’t my hands shaking? Why does nobody stop me?” It practically reminded me of an old Incredible Hulk cartoon I used to watch on a loop, “Dizzy, shaky. Unable … to … stand …” It’s almost like she’s literally transforming superhero style into this other person she is in the end (“Superc*nt” – no don’t close the window, that’s the movie’s word, not mine – would almost be the perfect title, in fact). But though I’d struggle to say the movie is necessarily dark – on the contrary, it revels in its near-schlockiness just about wherever it possibly can – it’s certainly more interested in showing how affected – and, ultimately, irredeemably destroyed – Foster’s character is by every act of violence. And that’s the giant hairline than separates it from the far less reverent Sin City.

Anyway, like I said, I was amazed to find it really wasn’t just the Jodie that thrilled me in this movie. It’s every bit as absorbingly intense emotionally as I found The End of the Affair. It’s one of those movies that just fired its harpoon of interest directly into the center of my forehead and never let me go. At almost 2 hours in length, that’s really no mean feat. There’s just so much here that can only improve on subsequent viewings. There are so many things that really shouldn’t work, so many conveniences and contrivances – quite literally, the shooting in the convenience store, then the trust Foster shows following a stranger into a back alley to get a gun – but they’re all smoothed over effortlessly by what I can only assume is a Disbelief Suspension Device that Jodie Foster has concealed somewhere on her person at all times on set.

My mum said afterwards how Foster looks much as she did in The Accused. I said, yeh, and I’m sure that’s how a lot of people, possibly even Jodie, hoped that movie would end. It’s basically that movie meets Taxi Driver, Iris all grown up and doing the Travis Bickle thing – with the prostitute in the taxi, it’s almost a direct lift. It honestly amazes me that I haven’t heard more people going crazy about how basically dangerous this movie is etc, like Daily Mail types who said David Cronenberg’s Crash was gonna bring down society etc. This in itself probably says more than the movie itself does about how much morals have crumbled in just a decade. Even I found myself during this movie, even as I was quietly cheering Jodie on, thinking, “but … dude!” But what finally made me love this movie the most is how it genuinely takes no prisoners. It goes all the way, right or wrong. It delivers, which is more than can be said of at least 80% of the movies I’ve seen this year.

I’ve loved this movie from the first time I saw it, but like Chicago which I watched just before this viewing, it’s one of those movies I always forget about. It just doesn’t seem cool to praise this movie too much, even though it’s Spielberg, it’s like, too glossy… maybe it’s just a personal prejudice – whatever, if it is… I don’t get it either.

The brilliant title sequence totally belies the heaviness of some of this film, and shows how personal Spielberg might get in his future movies, particularly one I recently read about which he describes as being very autobiographical. Leonardo Di Caprio plays the small but crucial age range of Frank Abagnale perfectly… even when he’s beginning to play it cool, he still shows the child when it goes wrong, absolute fear, and it’s amazing how much he looks as he looked in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, his break-out movie nearly a decade earlier, when he’s playing Frank at his youngest. Gilbert Grape has a much quirkier performance which is probably why Di Caprio was nominated for the Oscar, but this performance is equally brilliant, showing a real knack for comedy but with real intensity, in the fear already mentioned and in particular the last scene on the plane back to America, his reaction to the news I won’t mention for fear of spoilers.

Christopher Walken and Tom Hanks also deliver great performances, both portraying the honest guys… while Frank goes off in the best hotel suites, the best jobs, the best girls, never being honest, these two are the severe contrast – Walken incessantly pursued by the IRS, not knowing what a chilled salad fork is; Hanks ever humiliated by the 17-year-old fugitive, eating chinese food, perceived as a grinch by his colleagues, withered Christmas tree in the background. I love the Christmas tree… it’s one among many major contrasts which are shown between the lucrative criminal and the practically poverty-stricken pursuers, but it’s my favourite. It’s so sad, so real, but also, so funny.

John Williams’ score is one of his best. The “Recollections” theme on a lone saxophone always instantly makes me want to cry… I can’t explain it, I’ve studied music theory but forgotten it and I’m glad – music is something I love to listen to, perform, and compose, but I never want to explain it or its effect. All I can say is, it makes me cry.

The opening and closing of the movie, too, contrast with this bitter-sweetness. The TV show introduction, showing three people posing as Frank, one the real Frank, the goal of the show to determine which is real. This is perfectly done, Frank seemingly trying to look the liar, blinking like the guy next to him while the guy next to him tries desperately not to blink when telling “the truth”. And the closing titles, describing what happened to Frank afterwards, now earning millions for cheques he designed for Fortune 500 companies… it’s like the current hacker situation, that complex issue, the way evil can sometimes lead to good. It just really says how mad the world can be. My take anyway