Law Abiding Citizen Review
I remember one thing we loved as a kid was playing cops and robbers. Half the kids in the neighborhood would rob a bank, usually a porch with leaves in the place of money and such, and the other kids would chase and arrest them and carry them to Jail, strangly enough that jail was the same porch, but thats all we had. The important thing to note is, all of the kids wanted to be the cops not the robbers. Some would think its the result of parental teachings of right and wrong, but I would argue that its the result of lots of television and movies where the protagonist is usually played by the character taking the moral high ground. Now this is where the movie “Law Abiding Citizen” has some serious issues that keeps it from being the great movie it could be.
Law Abiding Citizen(2009) Directed by F. Gary Gray tells the story of a Clyde Shelton(Gerard Butler) getting revenge on the criminals that invade his home and kill his family as well as the judicial system and the prosecutor Nick Rice(Jamie Foxx). The great thing is, Clydes trail of revenge has some of the best shock film moments I have seen in the last few years. Once imprisioned for killing the home invaders, Clyde Shelton creates a series of elaborate death traps some of which were very cool and shocking to see. Notably, seeing a specific characters brain splattered across the screen suddenly makes me even question the quality of the original Final Destination(2000). Sadly, this is the only enjoyment I recieved from the film and its true flaw is revealed in all of the killing.
The reason I shared my cops and robbers story is to show that no story is above its basic elements, in this case a definitive protagonist. Law abaiding citizen has no protagonists. There is no everyman for the audience to follow and identify with. We are supposed to identify with Clyde’s (Gerard Butler) situation, but in the process of getting revenge he kills the most innocent and only likable characters in the film. In fact, Jamie Foxx’s character whom we are conditioned to like least is thrusts into the position of the hero by setting out to stop Clyde from killing more people. This is all very unsettling and the film never grounds its characters which hurts any theme or general point that it wants to convey.
The truth is, Law Abiding Citizen has a really good idea that’s lost in execution. Maybe if Jamie Foxx’s character’s actions were more justifyable we could have identified with his journey through the story. Or maybe of the entire list of Gerard Butlers victims were better established as unlikeable villians. So many maybes could have made this a classic film and I wished for that epic cops and robbers drama or crime mystery but it never delivered on anything more than a few jolts and thrills.
