Title: The Accused

There are times when I watch an older movie and I’m glad to find it to be a bit on the outdated side. Jonathan Kaplan’s “The Accused” is such a film. Yes, the movie still resonates today with powerful acting and a self-aware need to point fingers at an injustice in the world, but thankfully that injustice is being dealt with more and more these days as we live in a society that is much more willing to take what victims say seriously. The story revolves around a young woman named Sarah (Jodie Foster) who is gang raped at a bar she was patronizing.

While she immediately goes to the police and reports the rape, she finds getting justice difficult as she comes up against a system that is designed primarily to protect the men in a crime rather than the women. Questions like “What were you wearing the night of the incident” and “Did you give the accused any reason to believe it was ok to make a move on you” are as insulting to her as they are to us. Sure, we understand why the rapists’ lawyers are asking questions like this, but does law enforcement have to ask them as well?

Thankfully Sarah has an ally in the form of Katheryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis), who not only makes it her priority to prosecute the rapists but to also prosecute the men who pushed them as well. Despite the obvious wrong that was done, Katheryn finds good people hard to come by. Her own boss threatens her with termination if she attempts to try the case, fearing that it would make the firm look bad. One college student may be willing to tell the truth, but he would have to turn his back on his best friend to do the right thing. Heck, even the bar owner clamps up, afraid of sending his best customers to jail.

“The Accused” is brutally honest about the lengths that society has gone through to protect men, and how the system is set up in a way where women being victimized is almost an accepted reality. More than thirty years later the #MeToo Movement has been instrumental in changing the conversation about how victims’ plights have been ignored, and a movie like “The Accused” would look very different if made today. At the same time, the underlying truth that justice is hard to come by for women who are abused at the hands of men remains true, so while the world in the film may look a little different, it sadly doesn’t look THAT much different either!