Law Abiding Citizen
Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen
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By James Christie
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Monday, 23, Nov 2009 09:14
Directed by F Gary Gray, out November 27th in cinemas, starring Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colin Meaney, Bruce McGill, Michael Irby, running time 109 mins.
What's it all about?
When Clyde Shelton's (Butler) family are brutally murdered in front of him, prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx) is on hand to dispense justice in the courtroom and settle Shelton's soul. But in a faux-Faustian pact, Rice cuts a deal with one of the murderers, allowing them to escape the death penalty. Shelton is incandescent with rage, before blurring into wan acceptance and disappearing from the film.
Cut forward ten years and Rice has become an all-star prosecutor while Shelton has... well, Shelton appears to have spent ten years working blackops for a government agency to help him prepare the series of high-octane punishments which power the rest of the film, as it dissolves from high-minded courtroom drama to a banal exploration of such big-ticket topics as JUSTICE VS REVENGE and CAREER VS MORALITY.
Things kick off when Clyde Shelton confesses the murder of the execution-escaping perp from ten years earlier, is put into prison and, at that point, begins murdering everyone from inside his cell, or so it seems...
As an example...
"A mattress for a murder charge, that's a pretty good deal!" - Jonas Cantrell
What the others say
"Face facts: movies have been awful this year. There have only been a select few that I've turned cartwheels over - Duplicity, State of Play being two. I can safely say without reservation that Law Abiding Citizen can be added to my list as the third." - Mania.com
"The big problem with the movie isn't the violence, or the message about coddling criminals, or the two lead actors, although they've never been worse. It's the utter implausibility, from the initial, drug-crazed invasion to the final, heroic walk-away from an exploding building." - Filmofilia.com
So is it any good?
Justice is about resolving a disagreement between opposed ideas, so what justice can be found in a film where the premise precludes the possibility of achieving justice? Both individuals are in the right - Nick Rice is morally right to attempt to get the conviction of a crazed psychopath in any way he can, while Shelton is right to toy with the justice's representatives because his conception of justice has already been marred by Rice's foul-up. To this conflict there can be no resolution, nor any great elucidation of any essential truth. So the film is as heartless as its frequent crowd-pleaser torture scenes in which no detail is left in the mind of the viewer and everything is onscreen.
F Gary Gray is a director capable of poise and subtlety (as seen in the measured, slower and simpler previous outing The Negotiator), but here he shows the audience everything, to a point where no drama is left unknown, no place unexamined. The press-jacket claims of the film being set in a "neo-noir" city are about as convincing as the general premise of the film (that a government-vetted individual would create a series of government-technology-borne traps without the government knowing). Each setting is intricate and each character has walked off the panels of a comic-book and into the path of the lens, but unlike in such high-torque flicks as Watchmen or The Dark Night the intricacy fails to create a cats-cradle of intrigue and interpersonal relationships. Instead it creates a tangle of purely realised ideas, each one vectoring off from another in an endless game of explosive oneupsmanship. It's sinister, really, how much this film wants you to enjoy it.
Your reviewer's loyal plus-one stuck it out with him to the end, but her single comment, spat into a pint after the screening, gives the best verdict on the film: "It's Sunday night, Channel Five, at best."
2/10
Jack Clark