Law Abiding Citizen (**)

Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb
Seen: November 6th 2009

** Out of ****

Law Abiding Citizen raises an interesting question. How far are you willing to support someone on a fierce quest for vengeance? Because regardless of how justified this person’s actions might initially seem – in Law Abiding Citizen this just goes a few steps too far, leaving the sympathising audience a few steps behind. Clyde Shelton (Butler) is a loving father for about 2 minutes during this movie. He opens the door one evening (without first trying to find out who is knocking) and is greeted with a baseball bat to the face, a duct-tape gagging, a stab-wound in the chest, and a front row seat to the murder of his wife and daughter.

Nick Rice (Foxx) is a very successful prosecutor, his 96% conviction rate will attest to that. He does almost anything to not lose a case, including cutting a deal with one of the home invaders, Clarence Darby (the main perpetrator of the heinous crime in which Shelton’s family was destroyed), in order to obtain a successful conviction of Rupert Ames (the other thief, who witnessed Darby murdering the Shelton’s during the invasion, but did not himself perpetuate the violence). Funny how the father’s testimony isn’t sufficient but no thought is ever given to Ames’ testimony – just a thought, must be to move the story along…

Ames is sent to death-row, while Darby gets to spend 3 years in prison for murder in the 3rd degree, and 10 years later Ames’ execution goes horribly wrong. The trail leads to Darby, but he is framed, captured and very brutally murdered by Shelton. Shelton gives himself over to the police, and is locked up in a maximum security prison, but he manages to keep killing people even from solitary confinement. How? Well, about halfway through the film we learn that Shelton was a “special contractor” specialising in ways to murder people without being present. How convenient.

Now if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief for the remainder of the movie, you might still find the intrigue to build to quite satisfying levels, as Shelton finds more ways to creatively get rid of people, and Rice and his team constantly fight the clock to try and beat Shelton, to try and outsmart him. But alas, even a heavy suspension of disbelief will not drag you through the sudden elevation that hits the movie about 25 minutes from the end as the mayor locks down the entire city – this after all deaths occurred more or less in secluded and not so public spots. This happens out of nowhere, and is filmed by zooming in on a few police cars and one police helicopter, and then we are thrown into the closer focus of the story once again, about three characters driving the story in a “city-wide” emergency (everyone else is dead by now).

In one scene Rice asks Shelton how his wife and daughter will feel about this violent quest for vengeance he is sustaining without end and his answer is that they can’t feel any more, as they are dead. Well that seems like as good a justification as any for this kind of movie, but it should not have been the only one, as it leaves too many issues on the sidelines, and causes this film to simply be another violent bloodbath dressed up as something more, which it really simply isn’t.