Law Abiding Citizen
There are few things more self-defeating than a good premise badly executed. What do we make of Law Abiding Citizen, a revenge fantasy disguised as an action film purporting to be a parable of equal justice. Director F. Gary Gray (prior credits include Be Cool, the acrid sequel to the craftier Get Shorty), and writer/producer Kurt Wimmer (responsible for the pallid, action-driven social parable Equilibrium, and the squalid Ultraviolence… err, Ultraviolet), have followed in Kubrick’s footsteps, albeit far down the ladder, using one string of atrocities to justify another.
No serious comparison to A Clockwork Orange is intended by me except for the Kubrickian technique of exaggerating one character’s traits so absurdly as to rationalize equal dosages of irrational, criminal behavior in response. Another film that comes to mind is Hard Candy. In my review, I argued that David Slade’s 2006 film rationalized vigilantism and sensationalistic violence with a false dilemma. Here the dilemma isn’t false. The accused is, in fact, guilty. But Jamie Foxx’s role as Nick Rice—a Philadelphia prosecutor who cuts a deal with the defense—creates a separate, yet equally troubling, dilemma.
Ten years after his wife and daughter’s murder, dissatisfied with the court’s decision to let off one of the accused, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)—resigned that the system failed his family—embarks on a series of revenge killings to get back at everyone involved in the case. He cleverly invested the time studying loopholes in law to delay his own incarceration (“It’s not what you know. It’s what you can prove in court,” says Nick). Not merely out for vengeance, Clyde’s objective is to psychologically torture the prosecutor with a series of injustices unresolvable through normal legal channels. He goes after co-workers, friends and their families, to drive Nick to the illogical conclusion that two wrongs do make a right.
Clyde is captured rather quickly, but only there does the hunt begin. He’s set up an elaborate series of trails and traps for law enforcement to follow. In prison, he plays games with the warden and the prosecutors, demanding special favors in exchange for details about crimes he has and will commit. This initiates action sequences to drag us through the better part of the film’s 108 minutes rapidly. Mr. Butler makes the role softly entertaining, as in a scene where he receives a luxury mattress as compensation for a confession. His cell mate notes, “Nice bed.”
Clyde replies, “Thanks. It’s a single.”
Where Mr. Gray and Mr. Wimmer fail, however, is in making both Nick and Clyde so short-fused. Clyde is supposedly an ex-military with god-like omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. How does a man involved in CIA “Low Impact Kinetic Operations”—yes, I, too, chuckled at the Bruckheimerian jargon-vomit—not have the patience to be unaffected by appeals to emotion and ego? As unnaturally-gifted as the story makes him, Clyde is only one idiotic fumble away from being caught by an equally-implosive prosecutor. Jamie Foxx is, however, entirely in his element hamming it up as the Angry Black Man Prone To Unprofessional Outbursts and Obnoxious Displays of Ego. Relax, Jamie, this film isn’t remotely likely to win any awards. On a side note, can you believe the Oscar-winning star of Ray made a crack about Helen Keller?
Law Abiding Citizen • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 • Running Time: 108 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive language. • Distributed by Overture Films