Law Abiding Citizen

Written by: Kurt Summer

Directed by: F. Gary Gray

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Leslie Bibb, Colm Meaney

Clyde Shelton ( Butler) loves his wife. He loves his daughter. They have a wonderful life. But everything is brought to a halt when the Shelton's are the victims of a home invasion and Clyde wakes up to find that his wife and daughter have been murdered.

Nick Rice (Foxx) is an up and coming prosecutor who has an astounding conviction rate and is gunning to be the top dog. He takes on Shelton's case but goes against Clyde's wishes and takes a plea bargain to put one criminal on death row, and let the other (who actually did the killing) go with murder in the 3rd.

Fast forward ten years. Rice is doing it big, as assistant DA. He's groomed Sarah (Bibb) into a great right-hand man. They are still marveling at a high prosecution rate. Life is good. Nick and Sarah go to the execution of Ames (Josh Stewart), the one pinned with the murder of Clyde's family. Everything appears to be going as scheduled until Ames yells out in pain and thrashes around on the table before the heart monitor stops.

Immediately an investigation is launched and is lead by Nick's buddy on the force Det. Dunnigan (Meaney). They find that the machine has been tampered with and have to reopen the case to try and find out clues as to who would have done such a thing. Maybe Ames' partner in crime Darby (Christian Stolte). Darby has been living a life of crime since his release. He gets a ring from an anonymous caller telling him that the cops are on the way. No sooner than he can question who is on the phone, Darby hears the silence in the distance. He follows the instructions giving to him on the phone and narrowly escapes capture. Until he finds out that the person giving him a way out, is Clyde.

Clyde then takes pleasure in kidnapping Darby and doing things to him reminicscent of the Saw movies. And then the shit gets gangsta!

Nick, Dunnigan, Sarah, and a host of lawyers try and get to Clyde, get him to confess, and eventually lock him in jail. Until they learn that people are still being murdered while Clyde is behind bars. Nick Rice must find who is helping Clyde on the outside before his own life is put into danger.

Jamie Foxx does a pretty decent job. Really headstrong into advancing in his career. Starts off as a loving husband whos eager to be a dad, but ends up as being the guy who is too busy at work to go to his kids recital. He's kind of a dick, but he isn't so far gone that he can't make a turn around. I still can't stand Gerard Butler playing an American, but his accent doesn't slip too much in this movie. As far as his performance though, anyone really could have played the role. You don't get too much background info on the rest of the characters to even care about what they do outside the office. Like they try and develop a relationship (plutonic) between Foxx and Bibb but I just wasn't buying it. And Clyde constantly pushes the theme of justice being served, but it's not strong enough to be constant throughout the movie. Nobody did a horrible job, but aint no Oscar contenders in the bunch.

The movie is incredibly fun though. Not exactly suspensful but it does leave you wondering how the hell things are going on. I'm so glad the studio didn't try and get this dumbed down to a PG-13 flick. Some parts are pretty gruesome, but I'm thankful they didn't cut away.

We sat in the movie totally confused as to how Clyde gets the entire city of Philadelphia to pee it's pants fearing that anyone who may have done some wrong to him in the past would be hurt, and the movie does a good job of keeping you interested for the run time.

Initially I walked out of the theaters with a solid B for the movie, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted I could ever really just sit and watch the movie again. You know how when you found out that Bruce was a ghost, and then you go back and watch him and little Hailey Joel and you're like "oh he did get shot in that suit" "oh yeah his wife doesn't talk to him ever" well you can't do that with this movie. It's not like the ending is totally implausible (ok maybe it is a little far-fetched) but without a crucial speech in the middle of the movie from some random, you really wouldn't be able to guess this one on your own. Even if I gave you the spoiler right here, right now, you'd be like "well how could you know that?". You couldn't. But that still doesn't make it a bad movie. Very entertaining. Very popcorn (I ate a bag of JellyBellys with my eyes wide open). I'll give it a C+.