Law Abiding Citizen Conflicting And, Ultimately, Unsatisfying

Never have I watched a movie that left me feeling more conflicted and, ultimately, unsatisfied than "Law Abiding Citizen" which stars Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It is a movie that wants to be an interesting twist on the revenge thriller, but then fails to execute at key moments and, ultimately, stretches credibility to the point that it snaps. When it snaps, it snaps hard and takes you right out of the movie.

The movie opens with a moment of shocking violence and depravity. Butler plays a man named Clyde Shelton. Right away we seem him tinkering with stuff that looks high-tech, so we know he is a smart guy. He is at home with his family, a beautiful wife and adorable young daughter, when the doorbell rings. As he answers, a baseball bat sends him to the ground. He is stabbed. Then his wife walks in only to be knocked down, stabbed and then raped. Then, sadly, his daughter walks in.

The two men are caught. Shelton survives his injuries. Jamie Foxx plays a lawyer named Nick Rice who is to prosecute the case. However, Foxx is an up-and-comer looking to move up fast into the D.A.'s office. Thus, he is more concerned with his 96% conviction rate than he is about actually punishing those who committed such a horrible act upon this man's wife and daughter. He also, apparently, as we learn in another scene, never even bothered to open the case file. Anyway, a judge makes a ruling that looks like it will make the case shaky at best, a total failure at worst. Rice cuts a deal that will send one perpetrator to the death chamber, but release the other after maybe five years.

The DVD has a lovely extra part that helps explain the legalities involved here. It turns out there may be more realism, at least in this part, than anyone would want to believe. What happens next starts out interesting, but rapidly devolves.

Ten years later, Rice is now poised to become D.A. One perpetrator is set to be executed and the other is already out. A horrific scene in the death chamber shows that the execution machine was tampered with. Then, the other perpetrator is kidnapped and tortured for a very long time before he is finally killed. Shelton is getting his revenge.

Shelton is imprisoned but then an amazing thing happens. He continues to exact a revenge against a system he feels let him down, all from behind bars. He kills the lawyer who represented the killers. He goes after the judge. Then he starts to go after the prosecutors who, he feels, did not try hard enough.

This is where the conflict and the problems start. By the movie starting off with Butler losing his family, he instantly becomes the character you sympathize with. He is the hero. If, like me, you end up WANTING him to destroy anyone and everyone who had anything to do with the case, it becomes a problem when the movie tries to shift focus and suddenly make Foxx the main character.

Foxx's character is such a jerk at the beginning that it is hard to sympathize with Nick Rice. There is one scene later in the movie where he looks a crime scene photos he should have seen when he first prosecuted the case, nodes his head and says "right, I get it now." Is that supposed to be enough? Are we supposed to believe that this is where he suddenly has a change of heart? Are we, as the audience, supposed to suddenly sympathize with him? I didn't buy it. I still thought Nick Rice was a jerk. I didn't believe, for a second, that the lesson had been learned.

In short, I was still wanting Butler's character to kill everyone who had anything to do with the case that let the killers of his family loose. I wanted him to win. I didn't even care if he killed off Foxx's character. So, when the movie shifts and suddenly Butler is the bad guy, I was not able to shift with it. This left me conflicted and feeling frustrated.

The limits of credibility about Butler's character are also stretched beyond limits. I don't want to give anything away, but if you can watch the revelations about how he is managing to continue his rampage from behind bars and not want to throw up your hands and scream "COME ON!" then you are a far more forgiving movie watcher than I.

"Law Abiding Citizen" brings up some very interesting points about justice and our current justice system. It sets up the system to be knocked down. However, it does not have the guts to tear it down and go for the throat. Instead, it tries to cover itself and make things seem "OK" even though nothing has really changed. It cheats and, ultimately, it disappoints.