3 stars : Many escape justice none escape vengance....

Picture it you have a beautiful wife a loving and sweet daughter a great job that you love and every night you come home to your family knowing there will be a great dinner waiting for you so you can sit around the table and just share some quality time with the ones you love. It is essentially the American dream; the dream that all want and most get but what if one day that dream was taken away from you? What if some crooks from off the street broke into your home rob you and murdered the ones you love Now say that the police were able to find and capture the men who murdered your family there are about to be prosecuted for the heinous crime they have committed. The Executive A.D.A( Executive Assistant District Attorney) cuts a deal with one of the murders meaning one spends five years in jail and is free while the other is sent to death row. There is one person who shares this horrifying story and that person is Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler). Two thugs looking to loot the place but instead one of them decided to take it a little further and rape and murder both his wife and daughter murdered his family. After one man is un-officially set free by a slick Executive A.D.A. and the other on death row Sheldon plots his revenge against all who have wronged him. The men who destroyed his life and the Justice system that let one of them get away.

F. Gary Gray and Kurt Wimmer's "Law Abiding Citizen" is one of those films that came out last year  slipped under the radar for me  I had heard things about it albeit nothing good. Most critics and audiences members turned there backs on "Law Abiding Citizen" in favor of worse movies. However, compared to other movies that came out around the same time, as Law Abiding Citizen” this film is one of the better ones "Law Abiding Citizen" is a smart merciless thriller that works its grim, macabre sequence of events on the audience. Like a symphony orchestra works you over with there overpowering music it flows so swiftly and confidently onscreen with the suitably cast and semi-convincing performances from Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It almost over shadows the massive implausibility’s in the script and plot. What  makes this film so interesting to watch  is not  about the story but what is most intriguing about this film is  how  Clyde Shelton(Gerard Butler) is systematically killing  everyone while amazingly being  locked up in a maximum security prison  throughout the whole film. I is the biggest mystery of this films biggest flaw, it is it biggest flaw because it requires a huge suspension of disbelief requiring you to actually believe you do not know how he is pulling off these elaborate and ingenious murders. However, when it comes down to it  you either accept the implausibility of the films plot or brush it aside as completely  absurd, I choose to embrace its implausibility even when in the end it turned out to be as absurd as it is.

I did not completely like this film as I said it is highly implausible but also entertaining this film is the kind of film that you like more when you are watching than afterwards. But even if it is very flawed and at sometimes half baked  "Law Abiding Citizen " works better than it should and plays out far better than you could ever expect even if at times it is extremely absurd.

Jamie Foxx is another actor who is not a favorite of mine  Foxx  in his entire career has only made two films that in my opinion are worthy of being called  his Oscar win for "RAY")2004) and  his performance as Max the cabbie in Michael Mann's "Collateral"(2004) for which he  also received an Oscar nomination. In F. Gary Gray, and Kurt Wimmer's "Law Abiding Citizen" Foxx plays slightly outside his comfort zone portraying Nicolas "Nick" Rice the sort of hero of this films story to Gerard Butler's anti-villain Clyde Shelton. Foxx's performance does not have much range and lacks almost if any, effort at all it is as if he read the script and just decided to go with that not even trying for one instance to push the envelope and make his performance somewhat more believable than what it is. I will   give him the benefit of the doubt for at least attempting to try his hardest although he could have done so much better. Gerard Butler is perfectly suited to play the role of the cool and calculating villain he has the right look for it and the style to play this kind of not so complicated role. Utilizing only the most basic elements from the direction fro Gray to Kurt Wimmer's script Butler is able to build a capable and vicious anti-villain when he is surround by the sometimes mediocrity of the plot and  pure absurdity of the premise. Butler is not the perfect choice for a role like this but he certainly proves he is a very capable one; he is able to help the audience ease there way into this film even when sometimes the acts defy the logic and in the end comes out clean as a whistle. The rest of the cast including Bruce McGill, Colm Meany, Regina King,  Gregory Itzin, Michael Irby,  Viola Davis and Leslie Bibb  all turn in strong supporting performances in a film that could have been so much better than what it is.  

This film will not become a classic and it sure as hell does not have the makings to become a cult classic what it does posses is a certain charm and sense of dread that works the audiences over enough to come out as a convincing and gripping revenge thriller. However  due to  a mild script  and mediocre direction "Law Abiding Citizen" is left  in the average area of films instead of resting in the more well deserved  good area however, then again considering the ideas imposed in this film average suites this film perfectly.