Jodie Foster deservedly won an Oscar in this brutal, uncompromising drama about the battle to prosecute onlookers at a gang rape after the actual attackers get off on reduced charges. Foster couldn't be better as the far-from-squeaky-clean victim, betrayed by the justice system, who fights her corner like an alleycat. The film itself is a real time-bomb of a drama that provides both graphic, unpalatable food for thought, and excellent courtroom dramatics, especially when attorney Kelly McGillis, mortified by her failure to represent Foster to the best of her ability, fights for self-redemption under threat of dismissal from her firm. McGillis is driven on by the realisation that, in the unlikely event of her prosecuting the jeering crowd successfully, the original rapists will be forced to serve the full term of the five-year light sentence they had been given and have their crime re-classified from 'reckless endangerment' to rape. There is, of course, a missing witness to be found, and much trauma in court before the case is closed. Mighty powerful, hyper-emotive stuff and engrossing adult entertainment too.