Law Abiding Citizen - one of the recent movies that I enjoyed thoroughly for it's thrilling screenplay. As far as the core story concerns, it's beaten to death theme:-a-man-against-the-system.
Clyde Shelton (gerard Butler), a devoted husband and dad lives his normal life. One fine day, two thugs invade Clyde's happy household, tie him up and brutally murder his wife and daugher.
Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), is an assistant district attorney and he takes up the Clyde's murder case. Nick cuts a deal with one of the accused murderers in order to get the death penalty for the second. Why? Because Nick doesn't want to mess up or damage his success ratio with an unseccessful trial. Clyde wants everyone invloved to face punishment as any other husband or father would do. Nick convinces Clyde who is emotionally agitated that nothing can be done. Clyde is furious and glowers at Nick from a distance while Nick goes back to his beatiful family.
Clyde fades away and Time flies. Aften 10 years, Clyde reaapears with vengence. By now, Clyde has learnt and mastered his torture methods and acquiring weapons. It's time for the punishment for one of the killers. Clyde botches the electrical-chair punishment unusual and cruel, using lethal injection. He then cleverly kidnaps the other killer, drives to an abondoned warehouse and executes him to death in a barbarous way one can ever imagine.
Clyde's real vengence and anger starts there. He's not just content to take an eye for an eye. He prepares himself to destroy the entire criminal justice system to make up foe the fact that justice sometimes fails. He targets one by one with anyone involved in his murder trial and eventually spread his wings to entire city.
So, the first thing he does is to turn himself in to police who come after him, willingly (and nakedly) right after Clyde kills the kidnaped killer.
The incarcerated Clyde plays few more cards, from kidnapping the killers' criminal attorney, booby-tarpping of various cars and cell phones belonging to people in his case. As things blow up right and left, Nick tries to figure out how Clyde is waging a war on the district attorney's office from behind bars - especially since the last ones on Clyde’s list seem to be Nick’s wife and young daughter.
It will be an interesting thrilling mystery on how Clyde orchestrates all this from within his jail cell. Note that he will be locked up behind bars nearly the entire times, making wild demands and taunting Nick.
Regarding the cast, Gerard gives us a memorable potrayal of an intelligent angry man who can plays cat-and-mouse games with Nick and the rest of the legal system. Foxx turns in solid performance as the mouse to Butler’s cat, but the character of Nick never shows the charisma that Clyde does.
Director F. Gary Gray (“The Italian Job,” “Set It Off”) gets points for some adrenaline-packed action sequences and explosions.
As it is, I was actually pretty entertained throughout. The movie clips along at a swift pace, and there are a few tense and surprising moments. This is not one of the best thrillers of all time, but it was a solid bit of cat and mouse story telling. The character of Shelton I found to be riveting, even if he was a bit gruesome at times. Still, the movie is worth a viewing in the theatre if you want to enjoy the explosions, but a viewing on Blu-ray at home would be a pretty
good way to watch it as well.
P.S This year can be safely said as Gerrard Butler's year. He has got three releases - "The Ugly Truth", "Gamer" and "Law Abiding Citizen".
For the 5 years, he has given us variety of roles like the Phantom in "The Phantom of the Opera", awesome King Lionidas in "300", "P.S I love you" and now this. Personally, I will say Gerard Butler is in my favourite actors list after watching "Law Abiding Citizen". Looking forward for his next venture, "The Bounty Hunter" releasing 2010.
