Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Dir: F. Gary Gray
Stars: Gerard Butler, Jaime Foxx, Leslie Bibb and Colm Meany
A good old pal of mine wanted a review on this particular title and I’m finally, finally getting to it – my apologies for the delay, sir! Regardless, if you haven’t seen Law Abiding Citizen, I think it’s worth your while if A) you’re in the mood for an intense Thriller/Suspense picture and B) you’re OK with extreme images of violence. I’ll say this, whenever I finish a film, I really try and review the positives and negatives of the movie. Even a film like G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra has its positives (come on, Sienna Miller?). Granted, the positives are vastly outweighed by the negatives with a G.I. Joe type of film, but the similarity with Law Abiding Citizen is that there are indeed pluses and minuses.
The overwhelming minus, the negative element that somewhat skews the rest of Law Abiding Citizen is a scene involving torture. Personally, I generally don’t see the upside of showing torture in movies. I know a great deal of money has been made in films like Hostel, Reservoir Dogs and even this spring’s Kick-Ass. What I don’t know is why so many theatergoers make time to go see them. Isn’t there enough violence and mayhem in your local newspaper? Even within this film, the fact that there was torture might be OK if it was handled off screen or more with audio rather than visual coverage. Look, before I go off on a complete tangent, let’s just agree that there’s a torture scene in Citizen and you should be aware of it. The only other minus I readily found in the picture was the convenient times at which new information would be offered. The new information revealed in “Act 2” about Gerard Butler’s grieving, vengeful father figure wasn’t consistent with his character’s behavior in “Act 1”, particularly the very first scene of the film.
These negatives aside, this Thriller/Suspense picture is entirely entertaining. We all have our frustrations with the justice system in this country. Clyde Shelton (played by Butler) loses his wife and daughter to a brutal home invasion. Nick Rice (evenly played by Foxx) is the Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney in charge of the case. To be sure they get justice, he makes a deal in which one of the perpetrators goes to the electric chair while the other (who seemed to be the “A Dog” on the crime, by the way) goes to jail, but out in three to four years. As the preview to the film alludes, Shelton takes it upon himself to take revenge not only on the other perpetrator, but also on anyone involved in the case through an elaborate array of set ups and dealings with Rice. This list of “responsible people” includes Rice and his prosecuting team and the Judge!
Shelton finds this plea bargain with the murderer of his family completely unacceptable: so do I, for the record! The fact that Law Abiding Citizen makes you think about it is in and of itself a success. So many films are forgotten by the time you get home and flip on Sportscenter, right? But I found myself reviewing Citizen in my head the next day and beyond. The idea of a vengeful father not only getting his sweet revenge, but teaching the whole justice system a lesson in the process is phenomenal. However, I think we can agree that the execution of this plan – and all of the convenient elements at Shelton’s disposal – were a bit far fetched. Was I entertained throughout the film and legitimately surprised by some of the plot twists? Absolutely!
SPOILER COMMENT: I will say this to those of you who saw the film. I thought one element of the film really stood out as particularly interesting: the fact that once it’s established that Shelton is just a plain awful murdering bastard (he’s blown people up by now, killed the Judge, etc) that the Mayor won’t just KILL HIM speaks volumes to our system too, doesn’t it?