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Law Abiding Citizen
Following the brutal slaughter of his wife and daughter at the hands of a home invader and the subsequent slap on the wrist meted out to the perpetrator by the courts, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) naturally does what any grieving father would do and becomes a psychopathic serial killer bent on the brutal murder of all involved in the injustice, including his own Lawyer, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx). And who can blame him? He's surrounded by the most useless and incompetent conglomeration of lawyers, judges and police the silver screen has ever seen. And just when we're thinking that some mild mannered engineer committing all manner of psychopathic atrocities is completely ridiculous, luckily Rice's boss 'pulls some strings' and uncovers a secret agent (let's call him ‘Agent McGuffin’, shall we?) who drops the clanger of all clangers in our laps explaining that Shelton's prior vocation was some sort of super secret techno assassin spy or something. Oh, well that explains it.
The tragedy of this film is that at its core is an interesting and worthwhile concept: that the judicial system is pro-criminal, that it delivers sentencing which is disproportionate to the crime and that lawyers are concerned more with winning cases than serving justice. We see examples of this in our own community almost on a daily basis so we have no problem empathising with this premise. But it's all so appallingly implemented.
The film has many flaws but its critical one is its lack of a 'good guy' with which we can identify. It's not Shelton, his retribution is so contemptible and such a disproportionate response that any empathy garnered for him at the beginning of the film swiftly evaporates as he transforms swiftly from victim to predator; we actually feel sorry for the guy who slays his family when we see what Shelton does to him. Which leaves Rice, the self-serving lawyer who is so incompetent that Shelton must point out to him the flaws in his own confession and who will ultimately defeat his nemesis by stooping to his level. (I don't think that's too big a spoiler in a film such as this.) The movie's peddling of its two, or three or four… wrongs-make-a-right philosophy serves only to deepen the contempt.
Also plagued by logical inconsistencies and a complete dearth of common sense, the ironically-titled Law Abiding Citizen has little to recommend it.
Stuart Jamieson
www.lawabidingcitizenfilm.com
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