Going Beyond the Law

Too often, when we watch action movies featuring a wronged man seeking revenge on “the system”, it features one guy with a gun taking out people who have wronged him using a lot of brawn and huge amounts of firepower. This was the kind of movie that made stars out of Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone, and Eastwood in the past. The difference with Law Abiding Citizen is that this time around, the wronged person uses his brain more than just brawn.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) sees his home invaded by thugs and blacks out before his wife and daughter are murdered. Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is eager to keep his conviction rate, so rather than take the case before a judge and jury, he agrees to a deal that will lessen the charges against the actual rapist and killer Clarence Darby (Christian Stolte) but will sentence one of his men to death by lethal injection. Shelton is devastated and angered when he sees Darby shake Rice’s hand. Ten years later, Darby’s accomplice Ames dies an excruciating death. Darby meets an even more gruesome fate. When Rice (who has risen to the rank of assistant district attorney) arrests Shelton for the murders, Clyde almost gleefully agrees to be imprisoned. Meanwhile, other people who were involved in the case surrounding Shelton’s family are dying one at a time while he sits in jail. How can he be causing all of it and how low is he willing to go to fix the judicial system?

I’ve been a Gerard Butler fan since he made such a huge impact as the Spartan king Leonidas in 300. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in his last film, Gamer. It’s good to see that with Law Abiding Citizen, Butler gets back some well-deserved swagger. Here is somebody who has been wronged by the faulty American justice system who systematically eliminates every person he thinks robbed him of his family. He doesn’t just go around punching people or shooting them with guns, he has meticulously planned everything in detail to use a variety of means to send each person a message. It’s almost impossible not to root for Shelton while the killings are happening, even though he’s supposed to be the film’s villain.

Director F. Gary Gray has already proven himself to be a good action-drama filmmaker in the past with films such as The Negotiator and the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, so Law Abiding Citizen doesn’t let up in the action department. The city of Philadelphia provides some additional character to the movie that would otherwise be lost of the filmmakers had just elected to make it another generic New York film. It’s a refreshing change though to see African-American Foxx as the slick but successful lawyer while the Caucasian Butler is the diabolical convict with nothing left to lose. Apparently Butler (who also served as a producer on the film) asked that he take the Shelton role even though Foxx was already previously cast in it. Though both are different kinds of actors, they do share some nice screen time together and that added to my enjoyment of the film.

Butler’s Shelton is a pretty vengeful character here, but he’s convinced that he’s helping in fixing a dying and decrepit organism that robs people of true justice. The various ways in which he kills everyone shows both genius and madness, making it irresistible to the audience. Yes, we all know that Nick Rice was a slimy bastard who did anything to get ahead, but the way Shelton took out Rice’s co-workers and associates went beyond just getting rid of “the bad guys” and inevitably makes Shelton a “bad guy” himself. Still, it was pretty sweet how he got his point across, as depraved a point as it was.