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TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler star in "Law Abiding Citizen."
"Law Abiding Citizen" wants to be a far more poignant movie. Although the flick - like its title character - has a valid point, said point gets lost in a sea of violence.
While fun, "Law Abiding Citizen" never reaches guilty pleasure territory. Twentieth Century Fox's similarly themed "Death Sentence" starring Kevin Bacon succeeded in this by not really concocting any message or moral. It relied solely on emotion. That is something "Law Abiding Citizen" loses as time goes on.
The thriller certainly starts strong and presents a situation in which the audience can feel comfortable justifying the violence but it eventually falls apart. By struggling to show a thread of intellect - unsuccessfully, by the way - "Law Abiding Citizen's" momentum deconstructs before completely imploding in the film's final moments.
Gerard Butler stars as family man Clyde Shelton in Overture Films' "Law Abiding Citizen." Clyde's wife and daughter are brutally murdered by a pair of men during a home invasion at the start of the movie. Cut to the court proceedings where prosecutor Nick Rice, portrayed by Jamie Foxx, offers the more violent of the killers a short prison sentence in exchange for a testimony ensuring his partner's placement on death row.
Fast-forward 10 years to the date of the lethal injection. What should be a painless procedure results in what one of the flick's characters calls an infringement on the convict's eighth-amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. A clue lead police to the man's partner but it is all a scheme to frighten him into Clyde's vengeful hands.
It does not take long for police to connect both men's deaths to Clyde. They arrest him and, after some negotiation, he confesses to the murders. But he also confesses to murders that have not yet taken place. Despite Clyde remaining behind bars, key players in his family's murder trial keep winding up dead. It appears as though Clyde has set into motion a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that only Nick can end.
Early scenes in "Law Abiding Citizen" are a bit on the gruesome side. But they are also carefully calculated. The problem is that screenwriter Kurt Wimmer ends up painting himself into a corner. Whereas Clyde's first few acts of violence are intricately premeditated, they turn more blatantly explosive in the second half - literally. And not only do plot holes remain unfilled thus rendering many key puzzle pieces illogical, but the movie itself feels far less thrilling as a result.
On the other hand, director F. Gary Gray does a spectacular job devising some of "Law Abiding Citizen's" most shocking events. Certain moments give the audience the biggest jolts of the year. It is just too bad that their effect is somewhat diluted by the filmmakers' desire to prove a point. It is not that said point is unworthy by any means. In fact, it is one that should definitely be explored. This just may not be the most appropriate vehicle to drive it home.
More importantly, the filmmakers fail to offer any solutions. Wimmer's screenplay would have benefited from choosing a side. Nick receives the bulk of "Law Abiding Citizen's" screen time but the content never quite identifies which side is good and which is evil. Perhaps that enigma is the motion picture's whole point but it is also one of the reason's the thriller's intensity consistently decreases with each passing scene.
Near the halfway point of the film, Foxx's character refers to Butler's character's actions as acts of revenge to which he responds, “You think that is what this is all about?” That revelation is the basic caveat of "Law Abiding Citizen." If revenge was what this was all about, moviegoers would leave the auditorium feeling empowered. Instead, their fate is a far more nonchalant feeling. And, as several of the movie's characters repeatedly suggest, you can't fight fate.
Comments
Hated the ending here. Really hated it. Hate that Foxx's character "defeated" Depardieu's. I mean, all through the movie we're rooting for Gerard. Then all of a sudden, Foxx's character takes over the "role" of the sympathetic character??
Foxx's character was driven by arrogant greed. That one character played by that guy who played the sheriff in My Cousin Vinny was great. And he had it right when Foxx kept trying to kid himself that he/they had been right to do a plea deal with the monster in the beginning. The My Cousin Vinny guy's character knew they had been wrong.
The Kevin Bacon movie of the same theme was horrible because the Bacon character was such a humorless clod. We can all take a lesson from Charles Bronson.
Aside from the fact your comment includes a spoiler, I'll agree with your point Kyle. I would take another look at the Kevin Bacon movie, though. I thought it was a guilty pleasure!
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