Movie Review - Law Abiding Citizen

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Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton in the new film Law Abiding Citizen.  As the movie opens, Clyde is the victim of a home invasion and witnesses the brutal murder of his wife and daughter.  Of course, as the eponymous hero, he relies on the legal system to mete out justice.  Seeing as how this takes place in the first 10 minutes of the movie…that’s probably not the best idea.  Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx ) is the prosecuting attorney assigned to his case.  Rice is a rising star in the District Attorney’s office who’s less concerned with convictions than he is with his conviction rate, a subtle but important distinction.  He’s quick to negotiate plea deals at the first sign of trouble.  This predilection allows the man who murdered Clyde’s family to receive only five years in prison while is his less guilty accomplice gets the death penalty.  Clyde is less than pleased.

Fast-forward ten years to the eve of the murderer’s lethal injection.  The execution goes horrible wrong as the chemicals meant to make the procedure painless do the exact opposite.  We quickly learn that Clyde is behind the incident as he abducts the other murderer (who is now a free man).  However, Clyde isn’t merely killing the men who killed his family.  He is waging a one-man war on the legal system.  Feeling betrayed by the judicial system, he begins killing everyone involved with his botched case.  It soon becomes evident that Clyde, who easily continues to kill people even after he’s been incarcerated, is more than the simple family man everyone thought he was.  He and Rice begin to engage in a cagey game of cat-and-mouse as Clyde continues to outmaneuver “the system” at every turn.  Every move Rice makes is inadvertently the precise move that Clyde wants him to make.  It’s an elaborate game of chess, with Clyde always three moves ahead.

Unfortunately, while the characters are playing chess, the script can barely muster a rousing game of checkers.  I’m not even sure it rises to the level of Chutes & Ladders.  The film obviously wants us to be mystified as to just exactly how Clyde is managing to run circles around the police, the FBI, Homeland Security and the District Attorney’s Office.  It's intended to be a perplexing puzzle for us to answer.  But the picture is so riddled with plot holes and various other absurdities that it quickly becomes evident that we shouldn’t bother since they clearly don’t have an answer either.  The filmmakers think that Clyde’s murky covert profession combined with the fact that he had a decade to plan will generously fill all the plot holes.  But they don’t even come close.  While there are some good surprises and a few (dark) laughs, the film is about as a credible (and as thought out) as a Road Runner cartoon.  Nothing Clyde achieves is even remotely possible.

If Law Abiding Citizen has any saving grace it’s the fact that it sheds any pretense of plausibility within the first half-hour.  It doesn’t waste our time pretending to be a smart, thought provoking thriller.  It’s a cartoon almost from the opening scene.  Why would criminals in the midst of a home invasion kill a wife and doe-eyed daughter only to allow their husband/father to live?  Why would the assistant DA repeatedly be one of the first people to arrive crime scenes?  What prosecuting attorney would, upon meeting a convicted murder to whom he just gave a sweetheart deal, shake his hand…on the courthouse steps…in full view of the media?  The film is revenge-fantasy wish-fulfillment of the highest (and simplest) order.  Everything is designed to manufacture outrage so we can live vicariously through Clyde’s super-villain like exploits.  Until, that is, he goes too far.  Then the filmmakers, like a parent teaching a lesson with “tough love”, quickly allow the audience to switch sides. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Death Wish and 1 being Punisher: War Zone, Law Abiding Citizen gets 6.

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