Chris Pattas Blog

How do you stop a killer who continues to kill even after he has been put behind bars?  This is the question that "Law Abiding Citizen" - a new movie starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler - poses, and then proceeds to slowly tease the audience as it reveals the answer.  Butler plays Clyde Shelton whose wife and daughter have been savagely killed by two men.  But, justice is not seen to be done because one of the killers escapes the death penalty by giving evidence on the other killer.  There are two things I don't like about the plot...


Firstly, the police make a deal with the more violent killer rather than the one who is less violent.  This is a bit of a distraction at first because we are left wondering whether such an injustice could really happen.  The film doesn't really explain why the deal was made with this killer rather than the other.

The ending is a nice twist and would make it really hard to watch the movie a second time because we learn how it is possible to kill from a seemingly impossible situation.  But, the writers stuff up Jamie Foxx's character - very uninteresting and boring - and worse, we are left with an empty feeling at the end.  My children could have written a better ending in their high school English class.

I liked Gerard Butler in this movie because his acting is much improved over previous endeavours.  There is a lovely memorable quote from one of the characters: "The hard part isn't making the decision.  It's living with it."  I rated the film a 6 out of 10 mainly because I would wait for the DVD rather than seeing it at the Cinema - good to see it but don't pay for the big screen experience.  Here's the trailer: