Law Abiding Citizen Movie Review

October 16, 2009 by Brendan
Filed under: Movie News, Movie Reviews

Law Abiding Citizen Review

In Law Abiding Citizen, Gerard Butler is Clyde Shelton, a loving husband and father who, early on in the movie, is forced to witness the brutal murder of his wife and daughter. The movie jumps ahead a few years where the murderers have been caught and are on trial. The Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney handling the case, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), feels that there is not enough evidence to convict both murderers so he strikes a deal with one of the men where he will testify against his less guilty partner. The accomplice is sentenced to the death penalty and the other killer is charged with third degree murder, whereby he will be eligible for parole in five years. This does not sit well with Clyde.

Skip ahead another ten years and D.A. Rice has the choice of seeing his daughter’s first recital or watching the accomplice’s execution. He picks the execution. Perhaps the thing of which Rice is most guilty is chosing his job over absolutely everything in life. His own daughter even makes fun of him and his love for the cellphone.

At the execution things do not go as smoothly as planned. It seems someone has tampered with the chemicals that were injected into the prisoner. He dies, but painfully and slowly. Soon after, the second man who murdered Clyde’s family is found in a state of disrepair and before we know it, Clyde Shelton is naked and has been arrested and put behind bars.

While in jail, Shelton makes it quite clear that he sees Rice and anyone even remotely associated with the release of his family’s murderer as guilty of abusing the legal system. He plans on administering his own form of justice that involves a fury that can only be compared to the anger we could expect from a combination of King Leonidas from 300, Rambo from all four Rambo movies and even the fifth one that hasn’t been made yet and William Wallace from Braveheart. Nobody is safe in Clyde Shelton’s court, whether that person deserves a swift kick in the ass for something they may have done or even those who seem somewhat innocent. Clyde Shelton does not discriminate against anyone and, worst of all, he’s had 10 years to orchestrate his revenge.

I won’t get into many more details except to say that Shelton is one angry and mean mofo. Some of the things this guy does just aren’t right. If you’re into that sort of thing, it results in what is probably two or three of the best kills you will see on the big screen this year. In fact, one of them we don’t even get to see and it was still brutal. Nasty stuff indeed.

On the whole, Law Abiding Citizen is a fairly decent movie. About 3/4 of the way through the movie, I really thought it was quite good. Mind you, you really have to take what is happening with a grain of salt. You could probably get the smartest, most ruthless and efficient human being on the planet today and they couldn’t even come close accomplishing what Clyde was able to do – all the time while in solitary confinement. If you can look past that minor detail, you should find this film to be rather engaging.

For myself, I found the last 15 minutes or so, which I knew would be a “make it or break it” moment for the movie, to be a bit disappointing. There are probably three or four ways this movie could have went at the end and it chose to go one of the ways that I would have preferred not to have seen it go. Again, I won’t get into too many details but I’ll just say I wasn’t crazy about that part of the movie.

I also found that the movie left a few unanswered questions. Not really important questions but a couple that come to mind. Why did they kill his family? How did they get caught? Why did Clyde get naked? Why didn’t he ask for HP sauce for his steak? They’re not extremely important in the big scheme of things but I would have liked to have found out the answers to those and a few more.

I did notice one bad edit too – when Rice punches Shelton in the face and as he is talking, he has blood coming out of his mouth. Then 10 seconds later there is no blood. I don’t know why but that kind of stuff drives me nuts. You figure someone involved in the movie would noticed it.

Despite the one major and a few minor shortcomings, I still managed to quite enjoy Law Abiding Citizen. It was pretty intense, somewhat gruesome and even had a couple of laughs. Notwithstanding his rage, Shelton still managed to have a pretty good sense of humour (although I did hear a few laughs in the theatre at the most inappropriate times – why do people always do that?).

Nevertheless, Law Abiding Citizen is pretty much the movie I was expecting. It’s got a solid cast, a fairly compelling story, some good action and as an added bonus, some pretty cool kills. It’s too bad about the ending. I know I called the ending “make it or break it” and I suppose that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I wouldn’t say the ending broke it but it turned, what could have been, an excellent movie into a the lesser category of “decent” movie. (7 out of 10)

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