Jodie Foster’s role as Dr. Elanor “Ellie” Arroway in “Contact” is nothing new for the established actress. Similar to her phenomenal character in “The Silence Of the Lambs,” Foster plays a dramatically independent, stubborn, “do what I do for the love of it” woman.

She’s smart, incredibly brave and surprisingly seductive. She’s lovable, subtly funny and a true hero. Ellie is the kind of role Foster plays best.

As a child, Ellie and her father (David Morse) make contact with voices across the country via his short-wave radio. When her father’s life suddenly ends, Ellie is forced to grow up alone with the radio as her only companion.

Ellie then dedicates her life to the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrials, despite the scorn of the scientific community.

While she spends years waiting for any sort of signal, Ellie does come in contact with a handful of interesting characters, including spiritual leader and love interest Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey).

A struggle for financial support also becomes an issue as David Drumlin (Tom Skerrit), Ellie’s scientific operations director and former mentor, forces her to relocate and find private investors.

S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) steps in to help financially and brings the movie’s most confusing character into the story.

Both McConaughey and Skerrit add great depth to the film. McConaughey is one of the few characters who believe in Ellie, which makes him easy to like, and he also helps her face some difficult personal questions.

Skerrit’s character is the opposite of McConaughey’s, and his vain and selfish personality is similar to his “Top Gun” role. Unlike James Woods, playing another of Ellie’s non-supporters, Skerrit’s character is very believable.

But what makes “Contact” such a great film, other than the top-notch cast, is the way director Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”) incorporates a number of moral issues into a plethora of jaw-dropping action scenes.

The main issue — and most challenging to portray — is how the world would respond if we received a message from extraterrestrial intelligence. Zemeckis not only does an excellent job showing reactions from scientific, political and religious groups, but even shows absurd but quite possible reactions from the common man and the media.

The movie also deals with interesting questions about what would happen if we received instructions on how to build a machine to take us to the stars. Would we have faith enough to build it?

Another big question which works into the movie is the rather cheesy “who is going to go?” question. While it should be no question because the plans for the machine were discovered as part of Ellie’s project, Ellie is denied the responsibility in what is an obvious plot enhancer.

“Contact” and “Men In Black” may be the summer’s two space movies, but the two have very little in common. While “Men In Black” is a comedy, “Contact” is a serious film about serious issues — they just happen to be issues people don’t often think about.

4 stars out of five.

---

Corey Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.