Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Film Review: LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (2009)

RATING 7/10

BOTTOM LINE: “Law Abiding Citizen” is a solid thriller that will grip you until its conclusion, but the chief villain is more sympathetic than the hero, which makes the hunt to stop the villain and the obligatory ending far from satisfying.

THE GOOD: Director F. Gary Gray has delivered some solid thrillers in the past, and he does so again with “Law Abiding Citizen”, largely thanks to the solid performances he engenders out of Gerard Butler and Jaime Foxx, and the dramatic underpinning of each sequence and the narrative as a whole. Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a man who watches his family be brutally murdered in front of him, and then later sees the prosecutor Nick Rice (Jaime Foxx) strike a plea bargain to ensure at least one of the perpetrators gets the death penalty, while the other, and more guilty party, only gets five years in prison. This starting point in the story is imminently relatable, and immediately puts you on Shelton’s side. Shelton however takes matters in to his own hands, and in a diabolical scheme, he captures the man who murdered his family and brutally tortures him to death. Shelton allows himself to be caught and held in prison by Rice, but this is just the beginning of his plans to bring down the justice system itself which had wronged him. The film deals with the morally questionable issues of justice in our legal system, and juxtaposes a thrilling cat and mouse game of wits between Rice and Shelton, with the former’s arrogance turning to humility as he realises that Shelton is much more than just a man that was wronged. Gerard Butler performs strongly as Shelton, mixing a certain amount of vulnerability and pure lethalness in to his performance. Jaime Foxx plays the arrogant, yet good lawyer quite effectively. “Law Abiding Citizen” twists and turns like any good thriller should, leaving you hooked until its last moments.

THE BAD: The main problem with this film is that the villain Clyde Shelton is the guy you want to see win. Sure, he takes his revenge and diabolical plot too far, but he has an excellent and more than understandable reason to do so. Meanwhile, the Nick Rice character oozes the kind of smugness from the outset that automatically does not make you like him, coupled with the fact that despite a decent performance by Foxx, you never really feel or see the character transform from smug lawyer to moral and ethical enforcer (aside from him going through the motions by saying the words). Rice sees friends and colleagues killed by Shelton’s schemes, but you never really see Rice feel it. So each time Shelton ups the ante and shows how far ahead he is of Rice, you go for him; by the climax, you do not want to see him lose, which of course has to happen in a film like this. In the final scene, you see some emotion from Rice, but by then, it has no impact. “Law Abiding Citizen” is great until its ending.

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net

Law Abiding Citizen

I was really hyped over this, partly because there's Gerard Butler in a badass role, partly because it was written by Kurt Wimmer and lastly because of the really great trailer. Oh, and there's also the Oscar winner Jamie Foxx but until he singlehandedly defeats a bunch of Persians or saves the world I won't take him seriously.

Clyde Shelton (Butler) plans on having a nice dinner with his wife and daughter when someone knocks on the door. Two burglars, Ames and Darby barge in, knock Clyde out with a baseball bat. While Ames is looting around, Darby stabs Clyde's wife. And then rapes her. And finally goes for his little daughter. Clyde's lawyer Rice (Foxx) makes a deal with Darby - he snitches on Ames who gets death penalty, and Darby walks free. Clyde finally snaps and goes after his own justice. Now it's time to take the corrupt system down, one lawyer and judge at a time.

The resemblances to the Punisher are numerous, as you can see. But the Punisher is a simple guy. Give him loads of guns, and he'll break the walls down - right through the front door. Clyde is much more sophisticated. "Law Abiding Citizen" is a thriller, a deadly game of cat & mouse between Clyde & the System, i.e. Rice in particular. The twist is the fact that Clyde's actually IN jail. So how do you stop a killer who's already, so to speak, stopped? It's this detail that made the film so interesting to me in the first place. You'd think it'll keep you on the edge of your seat or biting your nails with suspense.

That's the theory. Reality however, is a different thing. "Law Abiding Citizen" is never really, truly suspenseful - like the recent "Bank Job" or the classic "Se7en", for example. You'll think "Hey!" or "Hmmm..." or "Oh!" a few times, but that's it. I blame this mainly on rather flat-out characters, especially Rice. The film runs for 110mins and takes off right away, there's no build up or introduction - Clyde's family is killed in the very first minute. So basically they had 109 minutes to develop the characters, which they hadn't.

Nevertheless, the film was great... right until the last 10 minutes. I can honestly say I've never seen a film ruined so much by its ending. In the next section I'll explain why. There are spoilers, so skip the part if you haven't seen it already.

So, Clyde's in jail, and yet managing to murder all the lawyers and judges that were involved in his case which resulted in Darby walking free. Rice realizes, through a series of clues, that Clyde's ultimate objective is to blow up City Hall. In the end, they manage to locate the bomb, place it into Clyde's cell and then he ends up blowing himself up.

They could've picked any other ending, but not this! I mean, here's a man who is technically a killer - but anyone would've done the same in his situation, seeing the scum that slaughtered your family walk free because of the corrupt System. He is a bad guy, but in reality he's the good guy. And there's Rice as a representative of that same corrupt system, considered good guys, but actually being bad. And the fucking bad guy wins! I'm the first to root for a good villain, but goddamn you Hollywood - this is not what I had in mind.

A perfect ending for me would be Clyde managing to blow City Hall, and dying in the process a hero.

They also made a stupid plot inconsistency - Clyde's character is shown as a master logician/tactician throughout the film and yet he leaves the final bomb in a suitcase, placed in a room in city Hall for all to see. He didn't even hotwire it so it would blow up when tampered with. No, he just put it there.

There are however some awesome scenes - my favorite being the way Judge Burch meets her end. That's guaranteed to squeeze a genuine "Holy shit!" out of you.

"Law Abiding Citezen" was another film full of potential, with most of it unfortunately wasted. Despite its flaws it's still a very good flick, though, and worth your money.

Rating: 7/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft

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Recommendations:

Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen - Directed by F. Gary Gray, starring Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, and Bruce McGill - Rated R

Kind of ridiculous and implausible, but hey, so is the Evil Kurgan, and he's pretty entertaining.



Law Abiding Citizen is a fun movie. Is it stupid? You bet. Is it completely implausible? Oh yeah. Does Gerard Butler lapse back to his Scottish accent at times? Yup. But is it also awesome? It certainly is. This movie has enough great moments to make me forget that most of it makes no sense.

The story is straightforward enough, it just gets more and more ridiculous as time goes on. It all starts when Clyde Shelton (Butler) answers the door at home one night. Two robbers burst in and eventually kill his wife and daughter. Enter Nick Rice (Foxx), an up and coming prosecutor. He decides to give one of the robbers a plea bargain while the other one gets the death penalty. This doesn't sit well with Clyde, so he bides his time (he waits ten years to be exact) and unleashes the most intricate and implausible revenge plot in recent memory.

Clyde starts off simply by going after the two murderers. In a Saw type scene he explains what he is going to do to one murderer in gleeful detail. This is what Gerard Butler is meant to do. Enough with the romantic comedies; he needs to explain how he's going to deal out death with a smile on his face in every single movie he is in. That's why I can excuse his occasional accent lapse. He honestly seems to enjoy himself in films like this and 300.

After the two murderers are dealt with, Clyde allows himself to be taken in...it's Nick's turn. But with Nick the lesson is going to be lengthy. Clyde looks at Nick and sees everything wrong with the justice system. So he can't simply kill everyone all at once. He needs to prove that this deal making system is broken. Clyde proves this by setting up some unlikely scenarios (how could he plan things out to exact times and how did he know what prison he would go...stuff like that) and demanding strange things. But it works and it's funny. I couldn't help but laugh a bit when he described the mattress he wanted in his cell in exchange for a confession. Or the steak dinner and iPod request in exchange for the location of a kidnapped lawyer. (More on that steak dinner later.)




Once Clyde is locked up, the story gets farther and farther out there. Apparently Clyde is capable of turning anything into a weapon and he's had ten years to perfect his art. Some of his inventions are quite ridiculous, but they're also kind of cool. I'll just leave it at that because a few of them lead to a shock or two and I don't want to deprive anyone of that.

That's enough for the story. I haven't really mentioned any other performance in the film other than Butler's but no one else really stands out. Foxx is okay, I just don't care for him as an actor. Though I will say that Foxx and Butler work well together; their interrogation scenes were entertaining. The supporting cast is strong, but no one has a character to work with.

What makes this movie stand out and what makes it enjoyable (or at least makes it a guilty pleasure) is its statement regarding the American court system. Clyde believes in a black and white/right and wrong world. There should be no bail hearings for suspicious people. There should be no plea deals. There should only be strict and swift punishment for your crimes. As faulty as this logic may sound, it always appeals to me on the screen. I know that our justice system is what it is and while it might be unfair at times, it certainly isn't broken. But when I read the arrest section and I see different bail amounts for the same crime or I hear about a murderer pleading down to a lesser charge I always get a little angry. Clyde, however, gets really angry. But the audience is with him; his wife and daughter were killed right in front of him. Is he justified? Maybe, maybe not. I was on his side, though, even though the film tries to sympathize with Jamie Foxx more than Butler. If someone is going to try and take down the justice system in real life, I wouldn't support it, but if they're trying to bring it down, literally, in a movie, then why not? If you're going to rope people in with such a premise, then you might as well go all the way with it. I though Law Abiding Citizen stopped a bit too short. It was still a hell of a ride, though.


*I haven't done this for awhile, but I have to talk about a few SPOILERS for this one.




I mentioned Gerard Butler requesting a steak dinner with an iPod accompaniment in prison. That might sound like an amusing little scene but it's actually one of the most hardcore scenes I've seen recently and it also plays on an action movie cliché in a very clever way. Let me describe the scene in detail: Butler gets his steak dinner and commences to eating it in front of an angry cellmate. He lets the cellmate join him and it seems like he's trying to make a friend out of the guy. They finish off the meal and Butler grabs the bone from the finished steak and clinches it on the sly. He moves behind the cellmate and gets him to try and find a song on the iPod via the remote. Just as the cellmate changes the song to a heavy metal track, Butler stabs him in the throat multiple times. "Stab" is too light of a word, though. It's more of a crazy punch-stab...with a steak bone. And the camera doesn't cut away. It's a shockingly brutal scene. Is there a reason why the violence was so amped up for that scene and not for the others? Maybe. The violence works. At a time when the movie was becoming borderline comedic I was jolted back into a serious movie. Even if there was no point to it, it certainly stuck with me. Years from now, I might forget the plot of Law Abiding Citizen, but something tells me I'll be able to describe the steak bone stab scene (that's what I've started calling it) for many years to come.

The action movie cliché I mentioned comes into play with the use of the heavy metal track on the iPod. Usually, in a film like this, a rock song kicks in (a Deftones song called "Engine No. 9") just as the violence amps up. But when that music kicks in its from the soundtrack. The filmmakers here found a way to make the music diegetic. I found this to be a stroke of genius (a small stroke, but a stroke nonetheless). I've always enjoyed interesting uses of music in film and that moment stood out for me. What can I say, I'm easily impressed when it comes to movie music.

Eric Harris - www.canneltoncritic.com

FILM REVIEW : Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen follows Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), an inventor. During an invasion of his home, his wife and daughter are murdered by two men. After this incident, he finds out that only one of them will be convicted because his lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) has cut a deal. Ten years later, Shelton starts to exact revenge upon both of the killers and the justice system itself.

Okay: the things I liked. Without giving anything away, the way in which Shelton murders individuals is pretty interesting. Even though the character of Shelton wasn't a very strong one, I think Gerard Butler did the best he could with it. I still don't understand why people think that he was miscast. Also, Regina Hall as Rice's wife was pleasantly surprising and strong in her paper-thin role. It's nice to see her play a role other than Brenda from the Scary Movie franchise.

Now for the things I disliked. None of the story seemed original. It's the film that most everyone has seen at least twenty-five times. Next, I think that Jamie Foxx was severely miscast. Now I'll argue to the death that Foxx is a phenomenally talented actor. I absolutely loved his performance in Dreamgirls and think he completely deserved his Academy Award for Ray, but this was a pretty poor performance. Not all of it was bad, but there were some moments of this performance that made me question the film's casting director.

Not a very good film. Not the worst, but certainly not the best. I don't expect to take up any spots on my Razzie ballot, but I really didn't like it.

Not recommended

Rating: 4.5 out of 10 stars (2.5 out of 5 stars)

Photo Courtesy: Movie Carpet

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Julian Stark (pen name)<br />
<br />
Founder/Editor: Movies and Other Things<br />
<br />
http://julianstark-moviesandotherthings.blogspot.com

Law Abiding Citizen - **

Starring:  Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler

Review:  Law Abiding Citizen provides a decent level of entertainment value, but ultimately falls short of being a really good movie. 

The movie centers around Gerard Butler's character, who is never given much back story in the beginning, who is forced to watch his wife and child murdered right in front of his eyes.

Jamie Foxx is the prosecutor assigned to the case against the men that killed Butler's family.  During the trial process Foxx tells Butler that the best case scenario is to try to plea bargain, giving the death penalty to one of criminals, and a lesser sentence to the other who has agreed to testify against him.  Butler is vehemently against this as he wants to go to trial to ensure both criminals get the penalty they deserve.  Jamie Foxx explains that if they go to trial there is a possibility they both walk but this way they both at least get punished.  Butler is not happy with this but that's the way it ends up going.  This gives us a decent premise to start off with, but the movie slowly falls apart after that. 

Once the remaining criminal is released he is found disgustingly murdered in a warehouse a short while later.  It is later determined that Butler's character murdered him and he is arrested.  Following his arrest he begins to play mind games with Foxx about who will wind up dead next.  From prison Butler's character is somehow still able to orchestrate the murders of other people involved wit the case on the outside. 

This is where the movie just seems to fall off the believability scale.  The ability of Butler's character to orchestrate all this just seems to far fetched.  I am willing to suspend some disbelief for the sake of a movie but movies can take it too far and this one clearly did.  It was entertaining but it was nothing more than a loose plot used to film a bunch of cool scenes with actors furrowing their brow and acting really intense.  The movie was entertaining if you can put the flaws aside, and if that sounds like your cup of tea it is probably worth your time.

Law Abiding Citizen

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Leslie Bibb
Rated R, 2009


A man looses his entire family in a senseless act of crime and over time he plots an elaborate diabolical plan to avenge their death. He really has nothing to loose and pursues those who played a part in the crime and subsequent legal trial that did not do his family justice. With cutting edge maneuvers and surprise attacks he lauches his plan that has everyone confused and searching for answers.

• I have loved Gerard Butler ever since 300. He did the tough guy gladiator thing, a romantic comedy (The Ugly Truth) and now he is taking on the role of law abiding citizen gone deranged killer. He does them all well.
• This movie was very good. It kept me guessing. It was a bit long but I didn't notice because the movie action just kept coming.
• Jamie Foxx is awesome as usual. He is funny as ever but takes on this role of hot shot city attorney and plays it to perfection.
• I have to say that I loved that the mayor was this incredibly powerful black woman yelling at the power suit wearing DA and city attorney Foxx to fix this mess now!! Their eyes got big as she told them how badly they screwed up. I felt sorry for them because honestly, what is anyone to do? This was kind of an unusual situation after all.
• By the end of the movie I didn't know whether to love or hate Clyde (Butler). I mean, how far is too far especially considering all that he lost and how the system failed him?

5 STARS

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Just Me

Law Abiding Citizen: Movie Review

Recommendations:

Last updated: 2010-03-12 02:41:53 by user06

Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen
Starring:
Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill
Director: F. Gary Gray
Genre: Drama,Thriller

Rated: R

A Man’s family is killed in front of him, when a plea bargain sets one of the killers free he takes matters into his own hands to exact revenge on both the killer and the D.A’s office that set him free.

Gerard Butler Stars as Clyde a C.I.A “Brain” who is attacked with his family in the house, after being overpowered he witnesses the two intruders murder his wife and daughter in front of him. Ten years after the murders he is told by Assistant D.A Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) that rather than taking the case to trial a plea bargain has been made. Nick tells Clyde that “some justice is better than no justice” Although the real reason is Nick doesn’t want to jeopardize his conviction rate. After the Plea Clyde witnesses the murderer shaking Nick’s hand which sets off Clyde to enact a plan to bring down the system that set the killer free.

The first eighty percent of the movie is pretty good it’s interesting to see Clyde get his revenge and put his plan into place. Clyde is very similar to Jigsaw from the saw movies with his killings trying to teach a lesson to Nick. Clyde’s plan involves some cleverness and ingenuity but at the same time he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty ala a porterhouse bone shanking to the neck of an inmate. Clyde is a great Anti-Hero, we learn that he was a C.I.A “Brain” whose job it was to figure out how to kill people that were too protected to be killed traditionally; “If Clyde wants you dead then you’re dead” the C.I.A agent says and for the first 80% of the movie he was right. Clyde has a plan and is always a step ahead of everyone else. With that much of the movie invested in Clyde you begin to root for him nobody in the D.A’s office is likeable and Clyde was wronged, you buy into Clyde’s revenge and his ability to outthink everyone.

The ending of the movie is complete crap and ruins the first 80%, the way that Nick figures everything out feels cheap and you believe Clyde would have known this; it goes completely against everything that was being built up. There were a million endings they could have gone with and from a movie claiming something biblical would happen you expect an ending that would deliver more. If I left before the last half hour I would gladly recommend this unfortunately I stayed.

I should have realized that this movie would be crap Jamie Foxx should change his stage name to “The Trash Man” it seems like he is content to consistently deliver Garbage every chance he gets. He is a male version of Jennifer Lopez and there career parallels are eerily similar, both worked on In Living Color both think they can sing, both think they are a lot better than they really are, And both make Dogshit Movies

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law abiding citizen

well, gerard butler looks pretty awesome with his shirt off.  and i’m really starting to miss the in living color jamie foxx days.  dude is just way too serious.

other than that, i really can’t say a lot about this film.  other than people seem to like it.  the friend i was with when i saw it really liked it as well.  i think i’m just an uber critic.

i think their objective in this film, other than blowing a bunch of stuff up, was to point out some flaws with our legal system.  like making deals with murderers and bad guys and giving them lesser sentences so they can give another bad guy and murderer a harsher sentence.  and i know this goes on.  i’ve seen it in other movies.

ol’ gerard loses his mind when the murderer of his wife and daughter get off with a light sentence because the guy testifies against another bad guy.  and he really does kill everybody.

it’s one of those deals where they set him up like a regular dude then we find out he’s got some mysterious lump sum payments made to him by the department of defense.  and no one thinks anything of it until people start dying.  turns out he’s like some brilliant black ops mastermind.

wow, who saw that coming?

i did come in late, which i really hate to do, and missed the terrible murder that started it.  maybe i would have bought into it a little more.  i just didn’t think all that was necessary.

there are some good action sequences and the actors all do a good job.  i particularly liked leslie bibb who plays jamie foxx’s assistant and bruce mcgill who plays the old lawyer confidant.  colm meaney is good as the cop.  i love that dude, he used to be star trek: the next generation and also in one of the spin offs.

two large movie theater popcorns out of five.  go see paranormal activity.

Cal Reed

Law Abiding Citizen

Well...this movie was very violent and bloody. All the blood does not add to the movie. I know...crazy thought. Gerard Bulter plays Clyde Shelton. His wife and daughter were brutally killed in front of him. Ten years pass, one of the murderers is set free, and Clyde goes insane and is determined to kill the man who killed his family and go after anyone else involved in setting the murderer free. It's no big surprise where this is going to lead...let's just say the movie earned its R rating. Gerard Bulter and Jamie Foxx are far better actors than this movie shows. The plot was good, the execution not so much. The movie was okay, just too simple and nothing made the movie especially interesting to watch. I'm glad I didn't see it in theaters...definitely not worth 8 bucks...but I did get my dollar's worth out of my rental. Of course I did almost fall asleep toward the end, but in my defense it was getting late.

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Law Abiding Citizen

Upright Citizen's Tirade

Law Abiding Citizen is better than I thought it would be and didn't end the way I thought it would. That doesn't mean it wasn't dumb. It was.

The movie opens ten years ago. Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a wealthy inventor who lives an idyllic life with his wife and daughter until the day two thieves stage a home invasion that results in the rapes and murders of both his wife and his daughter who looks to be about six. Prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) accepts a plea bargain from the guy who actually committed the really sick crimes so that the one who just wanted to rob the place and leave would go to death row. This drives Clyde Shelton insane.

Ten years later, it's execution day for the one who committed society's greatest offense, failure to plea bargain. Things don't quite go according to plan though. Instead of being sedated during his lethal injection, the chemicals get mixed up and he ends up being awake throughout the entire induced heart attack. Later in the day, we see Clyde Shelton kidnap, torture and gruesomely murder the one who only spent a few years in jail. Ok, so far, so good. Shelton took revenge on the men who killed his family. Most of society would still take pity on him even if they couldn't condone taking the law into his own hands. Nick Rice even tells him as much but Shelton doesn't stop there. He kills the lawyer who arranged the plea bargain. He kills the judge who threw out the DNA evidence. He kills his cellmate. Huh? Why does he do that?

This is where it starts getting dumb. It turns out Shelton was some sort of super assassin some years back and not one of those bland "shoot from the bell tower" assassins either. No no no, he'd come up with these elaborate schemes you normally only see in cartoons. There was something about a wire in a necktie set to choke anyone who wore it, for example. That explains why he uses things like machine gun mounted robots at one point in the film. Using his elaborate schemes, he begins killing people who had nothing to do with the case, a grand plot that will eventually result on an attempt on the mayor's life. He says this isn't about vengeance and that he's doing this to accomplish the amorphous goal of, "bringing the whole system down." That's a load of crap, by the way. This is a plot of vengeance launched by a crazy man who tries to make the world as crazy as he is and, especially in Nick Price's case, succeeds.

A couple of surprises did manage to up my appreciation level of the movie. For example, who is doing all the leg work involved in Shelton's murders if he's in prison? Normally in movies like this, there's an extra guy who doesn't serve much of a purpose except to eventually be revealed as a villain at the end of the movie. I thought I had Shelton's accomplice and their method of communication all figured out but I was wrong so good work on that, movie. Also, I didn't really see the ending coming. Don't want to spoil it but I will say that I've seen too many real life examples of what happens when you set aside the legal system's checks and balances and there are too many people who confuse fiction with reality and could see this as a manual on what to do with problem criminals. The good news is that these deep thoughts didn't enter my mind until after I left the theater so again, good work, movie.

Law Abiding Citizen isn't horrible by any means but it's not all that great either. It appeals to a more adult audience which means I didn't have to sit there while two girls in front of me texted each other about how cute the boy sitting in between them was or anything like that. The best summation I can give is this movie is better than no movie at all. Not exactly an endorsement that will get people running with all due haste to the nearest multiplex but it's the best you're gonna get.

Law Abiding Citizen

I love theaters, so, I'll often go to see movies that I wouldn't normally rent or bother with on cable.  In the past, I have been pleasantly surprised.  Other times, well, I got out and I went to a theater and all knowledge is good, even if that knowledge is just how badly a film sucked.  (Hey, I could have went with, "Eternal vigilance is the price of integrity," but then I'd have to go see stuff like "Twilight" just so I could dog it in the review, and I'm just not willing to pay that price.)  That's why I went to see "Law Abiding Citizen."  It looked like it might have potential.  It seemed like it might be worth taking a chance on.  I needed to get out and go somewhere or I was going to go crazy.  Luckily, "Law Abiding Citizen" was not really a bad movie.  Sadly, it wasn't a very good movie either.  It had potential, and it simply failed to live up to it.   

Starring Gerard Butler as Clyde Shelton, a man who's family is murdered by thieves, and Jamie Foxx as Nick Rice, prosecutor who cuts a plea deal with one of the two accused to get a guaranteed conviction on the other one, "Law Abiding Citizen" seemed like it was going to be another "Se7en," complete with a moral lesson spelled out in blood across a city and everyone who will learn, too late, what that lesson is playing right into the intricate plan, but, in the end, it turns out to be something between an action flick and a crime drama.

     "Law Abiding Citizen" is actually not poorly done, film wise.  Butler and Foxx do good enough jobs, although their parts are not exactly challenging, the action isn't over the top, although there isn't enough of it for those looking for an action flick, and there seems to be a point to all of it, but this is where the film fails, because there actually is no point beyond, don't make deals with murders.  The film seemed to be building toward an ending where Foxx's character would have to make a choice between stopping the killing by breaking the law, thereby proving a point being made by Butler's character, or do what the systems demands of him and allowing people to die or even, maybe, allowing Butler's character to go free because his conistutional rights had been violated, instead, it ended with the lesson being quite shallow and a big explosion.  How very sad.  There isn't even a clear moral good guy vs. bad guy in this film, just some explosions and killing.

     If you are looking to turn off your brain for a while and waste the better part of two hours, "Law Abiding Citizen" is a reasonably well done popcorn flick.  If you expect some kind of thought process to have gone into the screenplay and to get some kind of meaning from your time, you'll be sorely disappointed.

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Brian
Ciné Critique Américain

Movie Review: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen (the film not the citizen) is one of those films that could be enjoyable if in the right frame of mind.  Don't think about the plot holes or the political slant.  Forget the self-righteousness and accept it for what it is - an above-average thriller with big-name actors and a few solid moments, but at the end of the day, a pretty forgettable affair.

Unfortunately, I don't think I was in the right frame of mind.  To me, Law Abiding Citizen came off like a film that believed it was much better than it actually was.  With a few tweaks and in the right hands, I think it could have been pretty special.

It's hard to describe this movie without giving away the plot.  Oscar winner Jamie Foxx plays prosecutor Nick Rice, and Gerard Butler plays engineer Clyde Shelton.  Law Abiding Citizen is part revenge-movie, part battle-of-wits.  There's definitely a bit of Saw in there as well.  It feels like the type of film you've seen many times before, but you can't quite put your finger on when or where (just off the top of my head I can sense fragments of Public Enemies and Fracture in it).

Anyway, I really liked the premise of Law Abiding Citizen, though the impact of the introductory scenes weren't as strong as I thought it would be.  I then had to block the whole spiel on the injustice of the legal system out of my mind because it was waaay over-simplified, and more importantly, it was handled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.  If I had let that get to me, then the whole film would have gone down the drain right there.  When it comes to the law, I think most viewers are too savvy to buy into this kind of manipulative stuff so easily these days.

Then came the first couple of notable 'incidents', which I thought panned out pretty well.  The two big stars were beginning to stand toe-to-toe and the film was starting to get interesting.  Their exchanges were full of tension and it made me wonder what improbable thing would happen next.

However, at some point, the excitement simply dried up.  Big problem - because once you have some time to think about it all, the holes start appearing and you realise how trite the whole thing is.  The sad way the film fizzled in the end didn't exactly help its cause either.

So ultimately, I was a bit disappointed with Law Abiding Citizen.  Not because of its political messages or its over-simplification of some very complicated issues, but because it didn't feel nearly as good as it should have been.  Which is a surprise because director F Gary Gray was at the helm of The Negotiator (a classic in my opinion) and the solid The Italian Job.  Writer Kurt Wimmer is no slouch either, having worked on Sphere, The Recruit and Street Kings (none of which were terrific but by no means horrible).  Even Gerard Butler and (especially) Jamie Foxx, who are both usually excellent, didn't quite click into full gear for some reason.

I can't explain why the pieces didn't fall together like they should have, but Law Abiding Citizen made me wish it was much better than it really was.

2.5 stars out of 5!

PJM

Law Abiding Citizen

http://tomclift.blogspot.com

Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meany, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Viola Davis
Running Time: 109 minutes (plus trailers)

“I'm gonna bring the whole fuckin' diseased, corrupt temple down on your head. It's gonna be biblical.”

Law Abiding Citizen, the newest film from F. Gary Gray, director of The Italian Job and a few other movies I haven’t seen, is an action revenge thriller that can be summed up nicely by a short exchange between its two lead characters – Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), a mastermind CIA operate who’s family is murdered by petty criminals, and Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), the career oriented ADA who makes a deal with the killers in order to maintain his high conviction rate. The exchange goes a little something like this:

Shelton: “You're the one who makes deals with murders yeah? Well I've come to make mine. Release me.”
Rice: “Or what?”
Shelton: (pauses for dramatic effect) “or I kill everyone*”

*please note the emphasis on the word “everyone.”

Needless to say Rice turns him down. And of course, Shelton makes good on his word. After killing the two criminals he is arrested, but from his prison cell he continues to carry out a series of elaborate and brutal murders against public officials in an attempt to change the justice system that failed his family, whilst Rice must race against the clock to stop him.

Law Abiding Citizen is as violent and profane B-movie action thriller, a stupid but somewhat entertaining spectacle along the same lines of something like last years Death Race. Now I really enjoyed that film and was hoping to have a similar cheesy experience with this one; and I suppose I did, only to a far lesser extent. The movie definitely has its moments; the above exchange being one of them; other highlights include the line of dialogue “fuck his civil rights” as well as one of the most unexpectedly bloody kills I have even seen (the kill itself wasn’t unexpected, it was just the amount of damage it caused to the unsuspected victims neck that caught me off guard. Trust me; you’ll know it when you see it).

The only reason I might be able to recommend this film is Gerard Butler’s character. Everything in this film involving him is excellent. Now keep in mind that in this kind of movie, what can be considered “excellent” isn’t the same as what you might call excellent in something by Bergman or Kurosawa. But excellent never the less it is. He has been perfectly cast in the role, delivering the surprisingly well written dialogue in a combination of playful, menacing, angry and totally fucking insane, depending on what the scene calls for. In one of the films tensest moments, he delivers a chillingly relaxed monologue about how exactly he is going to torture one of his victims; in another, he offers to exchange a full confession for an orthopedic mattress. Any time he was on screen, or any time his elaborate murders were being enacted, I was thoroughly enjoying the film.

Sadly, every single scene in the film that doesn’t fall into one of those two categories was an utter waste of time. Jamie Foxx gives an underwhelming performance as Shelton’s arrogant foil Rice, who despite technically being the good guy I had no interest in seeing succeed. What’s worse, he is actually (with the obvious exception being Shelton) the most interesting character in the film. Leslie Bibb plays his eager assistant; her most distinctive personality trait is getting killed by a car bomb (spoiler alert) whilst Colm Meaney is respectable as the detective character, but quite frankly the role could have just as easily been played by a shop mannequin with a sign around its neck reading “detective character”.

Continuing down the line we have Regina Hall as Rice’s wife who’s key scene comes when she…wait for it…gets mad at her husband missing their daughters cello recital. Thus the scriptwriters demonstrate in this clever way that Rice works too much. Viola Davis meanwhile, twelve months after giving a scene stealing performance in Doubt, is absolutely atrocious as Philadelphia’s mayor (it’s not helped by the fact that she is one of the most useless and whiny public officials ever depicted on the big screen). But never let it be said that I don’t give credit where credit is due: Gregory Itzin’s posture is perfectly cast as the warden of the prison where Shelton is incarcerated. Kudos to the costume department on the suit he wears too; it really helps sell the performance.

Now none of these characters would be enough to kill this movie, except for the unfortunate fact that we spent so much time with them. This is a B-movie. I don’t need prose. I don’t need well rounded characters. In fact, I don’t particularly want either. I just want to be entertained. And any time Gerard Butler was off-screen for more than about two minutes, I was bored. And boredom only serves to make the plot holes that might have seemed amusing instead start to irrigate. I mean come on; could Shelton really plan all these murders? And if he’s really that smart, could Rice really figure out his plot? And come to think of it, why is Rice doing all the work himself; doesn’t the district attorney’s office have clerks? (Admittedly Shelton did murder quite a few, but still.)

I still think, thanks largely to Gerard Butler, that Law Abiding Citizen is worth a watch; his character is just that compelling, in a ridiculous kind of way. But it’s not worth paying full ticket price for, especially when DVD offers the luxury of fast-forwarding through all the scenes he’s not in. This movie has actually converted me; I hated 300 and by extension its star, but the man does a really good job here. Unfortunately the movie gets far too weighed down in things like ‘plot exposition’ and ‘trying to make sense’ (I use quotation marks to express my contempt for these outdated concepts). It’s one hundred and nine minutes long; it probably needed to be about seventy five. Guess which parts I would have cut out?

Rating: 6/10

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