Review: Law Abiding Citizen
Nov 27 2009 By The Journal
Length: 1 hr 48 minutes
Certificate: 18
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx
Director: F. Gary Gray
Star rating: 3
JUSTICE is blind – and by the end of F Gary Gray’s gruesome thriller, it’s also horribly burned, dismembered and disembowelled as a family man turns the tables on the lawmakers who let him down, with the help of his good friend Semtex.
The moral conundrum that underpins the screenplay is constantly obscured by graphic violence and relentlessly sadistic revenge fantasies played out on the denizens of Philadelphia.
His corruption at the hands of an unfair justice system and subsequent quest for retribution are supposed to blur the lines between good and evil, but the protagonists aren’t sketched in sufficient detail to carry the story’s flimsy convictions.
Gerard Butler has evidently been freeze-framing The Silence of the Lambs as inspiration for his performance as the family man turned vigilante.
He chews lifelessly on every cliched line, while Jamie Foxx, as the lawman who must stop him, is just plain lifeless.
In a deeply unpleasant prologue, brilliant inventor Clyde Shelton (Butler) is at home, playing the doting father to his young daughter, when two thugs break in, stab and restrain him and his wife and go after the girl.
Clyde loses the two people he cares most about in this sorry world then, to add insult to injury, glory-chasing lead prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the perpetrators, agreeing a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against the accomplice.
Then 10 years on, Clyde enacts his master plan to make Nick suffer just like he did.
But when more people die while Clyde is safely tucked away in a prison cell, the prosecutor and his cop pal face the terrifying possibility their prime suspect has an accomplice on the outside.
The film plays out largely as expected, with lashings of blood and gore to remind us that Clyde is a psychopath.
The hunt for the accomplice is a classic Scooby-Doo caper, replete with a ridiculous pay-off.
Justice is bland.
