LAW ABIDING CITIZEN Review

If you like puzzles and games that somehow just won’t let you solve them, then LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is a must-see thriller. Twists and turns on every corner, screenwriter Kurt Wimmer has crafted a story that… will keep you jolted. Gerard Butler brings you a ruthless violent villain we like root for and his equally strong contender, Jamie Foxx dances on the flawed system that gives justice a bad name. LAW ABIDING CITIZEN keeps you guessing til the very end.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is an upstanding family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered during a home invasion. When the killers are caught, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a hotshot young Philadelphia prosecutor, is assigned to the case. Over his objections, Nick is forced by his boss to offer one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice.
Fast forward ten years. The man who got away with murder is found dead and Clyde Shelton coolly admits his guilt. Then he issues a warning to Nick: Either fix the flawed justice system that failed his family, or key players in the trial will die.
Soon Shelton follows through on his threats, orchestrating from his jail cell a string of spectacularly diabolical assassinations that can be neither predicted nor prevented. Philadelphia is gripped with fear as Shelton’s high-profile targets are slain one after another and the authorities are powerless to halt his reign of terror. Only Nick can stop the killing, and to do so he must outwit this brilliant sociopath in a harrowing contest of wills in which even the smallest misstep means death. With his own family now in Shelton’s crosshairs, Nick finds himself in a desperate race against time facing a deadly adversary who seems always to be one step ahead.

What I like about LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is that scribe Wimmer keeps taking away every possible scenario that the audience could come up with to make sense of how Clyde (Butler) keeps killing people even when he’s behind bars. Just like Clyde himself, Wimmer has it all planned out, taking out certain pawns and moving the next pieces, all the while giving little room to try to figure things out. But no worries, it’s not one of those frustrating movies that’ll cause headaches, because the shock value is still there, not only in the way the killings are executed but also in the fierce, unapologetic dialogue between the two stubborn characters.

Nick (Foxx) is knee deep in his pride and not wanting to ruin his winning streak that he’d do anything to give leeway to murderers, it even has to hit him hard before he agrees to all kinds of silly deals that Clyde requests and Clyde is determined to go with the plan knowing that innocent people could be collateral damages, you can sense that he knows he’s banking on the fact that his opponent Nick is as relentless as he is.

What’s fun about the characters that Wimmer created is that both of them has fair amount of good reasons that make them not such bad people after all. You see Nick as a family man and even though he’s too busy for his daughter, he teaches her the right principles, he’s sticking to his decisions, passionate about what he does and you can’t help but admire that part of his personality. You may not agree with Clyde’s method but in all of us lies a desire to see the accountability of ‘an eye for an eye’ factor implemented on those who we think deserve it. His wife and kid got butchered in front of his eyes, even Nick said ‘Bravo’ to Clyde’s unconventional yet effective retaliation. You’ll be hooked by the psychological cat-and-mouse game that happens everytime Nick and Clyde are in one room, the way they mess with each other’s minds may not as charismatic and terrifying as what Hannibal Lecter could pull off but it’s potent nonetheless.

Unlike the story, F. Gary Gray’s direction is pretty mild, nothing that director Gregory Hoblit (Fallen, Fracture, Untraceable) could do or do better. But for what it’s worth the cinematic set pieces do their job extremely well especially the last moment when Clyde accepts his fate as the fire engulfs his solitary confinement.
I do appreciate how the movie wastes no time in its introduction. It covers the crime, the conviction, and the jump to 10 years later, all within the first 20 minutes of the movie.
This will probably not give Gerard Butler an Oscar statuette but he’s definitely making a great effort to be perceived more than just Leonidas. His eyes show heartache and anger, a lethal combination when mixed with having nothing to lose. Butler’s performance is not over the top psycho, he knows his character is just a man pushed to corner and is now pushing back and all he’s got his skills of killing people without being present. It’s an intellect at work. It amplifies the complexity when Clyde is described as invincible. When he wants you dead, you’re dead. Which makes the ending, when the scoreboard suddenly changes, even all the more impressive.

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