“The Crime You Watched”: Revisiting The Accused in an Era of Performed Outrage

In 1988, a young woman was raped in a bar. On a pinball machine. While men cheered.

It wasn’t a headline, though it easily could have been. It was a scene from a film called The Accused. But the horror of it didn't feel distant or fictional. It felt too real. Too familiar. The kind of thing we hope never happens, but know in our bones already does.

The woman was named Sarah Tobias. She had messy hair, a denim jacket, and a loud mouth. She was played by Jodie Foster, who wasn’t supposed to get the part. Studios didn’t think she was right for it. Too smart, too reserved, too Yale. But Foster wanted it, fought for it. And when she got it, she gave it everything.

Sarah Tobias is not the kind of victim movies usually give us. She drinks. She dances. She argues. She doesn't look for sympathy. She demands it. And that’s what made her unforgettable. You couldn’t tuck her into a corner of your conscience and move on. You had to sit with her. All of her.

The story unfolds like this: Sarah is assaulted by three men in the back of a bar while a roomful of others watch. They do more than watch. They holler. They clap. They egg it on. The rapists get a plea deal. The ones who cheered go free. And that should be the end. But it’s not. Because someone decides that watching a crime should never be a shield from guilt.

That someone is a prosecutor named Kathryn Murphy. She’s played by Kelly McGillis, who in real life had survived a rape of her own. She didn’t talk much about it at the time. But she brought it with her into every scene, every glance, every line that trembled just a little more than it had to. She didn’t play the case. She played the burden.

The movie doesn’t glamorize what happened. It doesn’t flinch, either. The scene in the bar, the one everyone talks about, lasts for minutes that feel like hours. It’s tightly choreographed, not for drama but for survival. There is no soundtrack. No camera tricks. Just a woman, a crowd, and a crime that unfolds not in shadows but in plain view.

And yet, The Accused isn’t about the crime so much as what came after. The trial. The disbelief. The way a woman’s pain becomes something to debate, dismiss, or dissect. People questioned Sarah’s skirt, her drink, and her choices. Not the men. Not the ones who clapped.

The year was 1988. America didn’t yet have the Violence Against Women Act. Some states still didn’t recognize marital rape. The phrase "date rape" was still a whisper. In the movies, sexual violence was usually something stylized or twisted, a thriller, a warning, a plot twist. Rarely was it something so ordinary. So socially enabled.

The film wasn’t a blockbuster. It didn’t have to be. It was a quiet scream, and people heard it. Jodie Foster won the Oscar. But the real victory was in the shift the film created, a change in what we were willing to look at. And how long we were willing to look.

Even the structure of the movie turns the knife slowly. We learn about the crime before we see it. We’re told that Sarah isn’t trustworthy. That she’s reckless. That she had it coming. And then, just when we’ve made up our minds, the film rolls back the tape. And we watch.

We watch everything.

And that’s when it becomes a different kind of story. Not just about violence. About witnessing. About the kind of guilt that comes from standing by. Or worse, from cheering.

Because this isn’t a film about one woman’s trauma. It’s a film about all of us. About what we do when we see something wrong and tell ourselves it’s not our business. About what we become when we let someone else suffer because it’s easier not to get involved.

You don’t need to be in a barroom to be complicit. You just need to look away.

That’s what makes The Accused so enduring. It doesn’t just ask what happened. It asks what we did. What we allowed. And who we believed.

Foster’s Sarah is a character that lingers. Not because she’s fragile, but because she isn’t. She’s bruised but not broken. Furious but not afraid. She doesn’t fit into anyone’s mold of a perfect victim, and that’s exactly the point. She refuses to be digestible. She refuses to be polite. She survives on her own terms.

There are plenty of films that tackle injustice. Plenty that take us into courtrooms, show us the verdict, give us the closure we crave. But few ask us to sit in the jury box of our own behavior. Few put a mirror to the crowd.

In today’s world, where we film fights before we break them up, where tragedy becomes content, and empathy often comes with a hashtag, the film feels less like history and more like prophecy. We still watch. We still scroll. But what do we do?

I think of Sarah, walking out of the courtroom at the end. There is no triumph in her face. Only something quieter. Not peace. Not joy. Just the knowledge that someone finally listened.

The Accused is not a film you watch lightly. It’s not one you recommend casually. It stays with you. Like a memory you didn’t want but can’t shake.

And maybe that’s the point.

You don’t forget a woman screaming for help while the world claps. Not if you’re paying attention.

And not if you still believe there’s a difference between seeing a crime and stopping one.

Image Credit: Screenshots from The Accused (1988), directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures. Used under fair use for critical commentary.