Review: Law Abiding Citizen

Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Viola Davis. Overture Films presents a film directed by F. Gary Gray. Written by Kurt Wimmer. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for violence and torture).

In the new action-thriller Law Abiding Citizen, we have a movie so high-concept and preposterous you almost want to overlook its contrivances because you figure hey, everyone involved must have known how over-the-top the idea is, maybe it’s some sort of satire. Except it isn’t.

A bizarre combination of vigilantism, serial killings and legal ethics, Law Abiding Citizen is a picture of such screenwriting cajones it ends up somewhere between wildly unbelievable and downright ludicrous. We never buy it for a minute, and despite a top-flight cast, it simply doesn’t work.

When family man Clyde Shelton’s (Gerard Butler) wife and daughter are brutally murdered in a home invasion and Philadelphia assistant district attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal with the killers for a lesser charge, hell breaks loose.

Ten years later, Shelton returns to exact revenge on the surviving perpetrator and everyone involved in the original trial, a proceeding that ultimately set a killer free and which Shelton sees as a grave miscarriage of justice. So far, not bad.

But after brutally dismembering his wife’s paroled killer, he embarks on a reign of terror, exacting elaborate murder set-ups and paybacks—from inside his cell. It’s all wildly implausible, and while director F. Gary Gray amps up the set pieces, bodies pile up.

Butler, the fine Scottish actor who starred in Dear Frankie and the movie musical The Phantom of the Opera, continues his career slide here after a string of forgettable Hollywood movies. Suppressing his natural charm, the character goes from sympathetic to unlikable to heinous. And Fox feels miscast also, too cocky and not believable. As a result, we have no one to root for, and we don’t care.

The supporting cast fares better, including Colm Meaney, Annie Corley, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb and Doubt’s powerhouse Viola Davis as Philly’s no-nonsense mayor. But they are all serving a film that plays a screenwriting shell game until it collapses on itself.

Regardless of quality, B-movies about vigilantes almost always work because when we witness onscreen crime perpetrated against women and children, we want to see punishment, period, dating back to Charles Bronson’s 1971 Death Wish right up to 2009’s Taken. And when good actors are involved, like Kevin Bacon in 2007’s Death Sentence, a movie like this can grip you, shake you and make you forget its escalating silliness while fantasizing about final reel paybacks.

Not so this time. Part Silence of the Lambs, part Saw and all nonsense, the film commits a crime against the audience, posturing empty notions about a corrupt justice system (wait until you see how Clyde addresses the judge during one wildly ridiculous outburst) in a misguided attempt to rationalize Clyde’s killing.

In a film substituting cruelty for character and sadism for screenwriting, there is no point in asking, “How could he have done that?” In Law Abiding Citizen, the expected reaction is, “Holy sh*t! Did you see what he did?” Skip it.

- Lee Shoquist