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Bookmark this pageLaw Abiding Citizen (2009)
Director: F Gary Gray
Movie review
From Time Out London
If you can buy ‘300’ star Gerard Butler as a vigilante with a penchant for quoting Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, this knee-jerk vengeance thriller may spark your synapses. Ten years after witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and daughter, Clyde Shelton (Butler) repays the two killers responsible: one dies screaming after Clyde rigs the lethal injection, the other meets a torturous end that is videotaped and sent to Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), an ambitious assistant DA who, a decade before, negotiated an expedient plea bargain for the second killer. But when Clyde is arrested, he declares war on the city of Philadelphia and its political and legal institutions. ‘I’m gonna bring the whole fuckin’ diseased, corrupt temple down on your head,’ he tells Rice. And he does, despite being behind bars. Director F Gary Gray’s remake of ‘The Italian Job’ was a solid effort, as was writer Kurt Wimmer’s reworking of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’. Sadly, there’s nothing here but bloody off-cuts from ‘Death Wish’, ‘Saw’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, in roughly that order.Author: Nigel Floyd
Time Out London Issue 2049: 26 November - 2 December
User reviews of this film
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- rob said...
- Posted on Jul 08 2010 19:27 I think 2 stars was very generous. i gave it 1/2 cos you cant give it a zero. All i can think is that they changed writers for the last 15 minutes. Maybe 'take your kid to work day' as the hero/villan rolls were reversed and technically 'Foxx' lets 'Butler' die, Worst film ending ive ever seen which stopped it getting 5/5 stars.
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- andy said...
- Posted on Apr 17 2010 23:14 mostly enjoyable but morally dubious.wasn,t qiute sure whether you were meant to actually sympathize with this guy.Any sympathy you do feel quickly evapoorates as the film progresses.also needs a huge suspension of disbelieve which did spoil it for me.Any ambitions to a serious morality tale are hard to swallow as well.
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- jinky said...
- Posted on Jan 12 2010 15:46 smelllllllll
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- Sinead said...
- Posted on Jan 05 2010 15:32 amazing film!! somthing that keeps you thinking and very interested. You will not be dissapointed with this film! Watch it! :)
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- Thomas Noctor said...
- Posted on Jan 01 2010 15:58 Original great movie! Man On Fire meets A Time To Kill! Butler is great in this well made and written film. Watch It!!!!!!!!!!!!
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- yenetwe said...
- Posted on Dec 31 2009 10:42 bad film
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- Molly said...
- Posted on Dec 29 2009 22:05 Best movie I've seen in long time once again the Paisley buddy does it superb !!!
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- Molly said...
- Posted on Dec 29 2009 22:05 Best movie I've seen in long time once again the Paisley buddy does it superb !!!
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- flix said...
- Posted on Dec 12 2009 18:33 Clyde is happy at home with his wife and young daughter then psychos rape and murder his family - he gets knifed but survives to witness lawyer Nick Rice, from the DA's office, cut a deal that lets the real evil criminal off with a short sentence the other one gets a lethal shot in the arm. Clyde's a first hand witness and there's enough bad guy DNA around his house to bake a pie - naturally Clyde has a major concern with a justice system that fails to deal out two death sentences. He waits and plans for 10 years to correct the justice system in his own way. His methods are awful to behold and not for the squeamish - clever plotting and a great movie.
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- MarkLondon said...
- Posted on Dec 11 2009 16:32 @Billy-J. Yeah, I concede you're right about the somewhat preposterous (though just about on the borders of plausibility...) confection around Butler's transformation from mild-mannered engineer to brutal psychopath, as you put it. As you say, we view Butler's demise as 'justice', given what he has done, but I dare say many people who had been through what his character had would consider what happened to the perpetrator as also justice. What i think the film did very effectively was portray the complacency and collusion of the US criminal justice system, and Foxx's reaction to what Butler does SPOILER, hitting him, was a clear sign it had failed to deal with him. Death - without trial - was the only option and the only true justice in our eyes. It scrapes three stars on that basis, I reckon.
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- Billy-J said...
- Posted on Dec 11 2009 16:17 I was looking forward to seeing this film, being a fan of action films and seeing this one as an action film with a slightly original idea (a rarity nowadays I'm sure you'll agree). However when push came to shove everything didn't work, it's attempts to be a deep study of the American justice system fall flat because the man who is supposedly righteous cuts a man into 25 separate pieces! The explanation of how he actually was able to carry out his master plan made me want to laugh and threw up so many plot holes that it began to resemble some kind of minefield. I can cope with some plot holes (I can pick apart some of my favourite films of all time), but this was way too much and when you couple that with pointless scenes, (Butler stripping naked to be arrested could be the most pointless I've seen in a long time, if i wanted to see a naked bum I'd watch Time Cop!) then it all adds up to a film that has nothing to redeem it, no likable characters and it's one hook turning out to be perhaps its biggest flaw. In fact the only bit I did like was when Butler SPOILER* was killed at the end END SPOILER* the only time, in my opinion, when justice was truly done. At the end of the day, when it comes to LAC the question I ask is, can you ever sympathise with a brutal psychopathic killer? Me personally, no.
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- cass_is said...
- Posted on Dec 10 2009 16:24 Great movie. I haven't seen an entire cinema room so full and so quiet at a movie for a long time. Nobody was blinking. Everybody loved it. At the end of the day this is the important thing. Not that it's a propaganda film or how knows what.
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- MarkLondon said...
- Posted on Dec 10 2009 10:48 Actually Nigel I think you're (wilfully) missing the point of this movie: the distinction between what most right-thinking people think of as 'justice' and what the legal system is capable of delivering (not so much...). That the system ultimately fails (Foxx hitting Butler and Butler's eventual, predictable demise) was, I thought, the most interesting aspect of the movie. This polemical aspect lifts it above most thriller-shockers, and I think taps into a deep frustration among the population at large against our legal and political institutions. A movie very much of our time, although it won't win any awards for subtlety...
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- Septic Insurgent said...
- Posted on Dec 08 2009 04:33 thought it was entertaining until the end when i realised it was a pro-amercian justice system propaganda video. what the ljglhbldfhbalshgkwE?!!
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- Kavy said...
- Posted on Dec 05 2009 21:36 Best film I have seen in a long long tym,great story line,nt 2 mention gerard butler is exctremly freekin hot :* xxx
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Cast & crew
Director: F Gary Gray
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney
Genre(s): Thrillers
Rated: 18
Duration: 109 mins
UK Release: Nov 27 2009
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