Law abiding citizen – What happens when the system doesn’t work
Law abiding citizen – What happens when the system doesn’t work
Rated: R Time: 2:02
Stars: Leslie Bibb, Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney and others
Final Grade: B+
Summary: Clyde Shelton (Butler) is really mad. But then, you would be just as mad if you’d witnessed your wife and kid being brutally murdered during a home invasion of your house. To make things worse, the local assistant district attorney, Nick Rice(Foxx) is so overly concerned to make sure his conviction percentage stays high for his own political image and gain that he’ll do almost anything to assure he gets his points. So, when Rice stupidly cuts a deal with the one home invader that murders Shelton’s family to testify against the other, Shelton decides that it’s time to fix the system and he’s just the guy for the task. After all, he’s basically lost all that was important to him.
Our movie opens with Shelton working on a project while his daughter works on a kids necklace for her mom. As the dinner bell rings, so does the door bell and when Shelton opens it he’s met with a Louisville slugger to the head. He and his wife are quickly tied up in the front hallway and stabbed. Watching the scene is his little daughter who becomes the next brutal victim.
As the sham of a trial opens up, the invader who actually did the murders is testifying against his accomplice who is later given the death penalty. Clearly Rice wasn’t interested in trying this case if he could get his points and not run the risks a trial brings. Shelton is devastated.
We now speed forward ten years. It’s the day of the accomplice’s execution and he’s on the table with all the IV tubes plugged in and witnesses watching when something goes dreadfully wrong with the execution. What should be an event of a prisoner going to sleep ends up with him having seizures and dying a rather gruesome death, much to the surprise of the witnesses and ever present press. Rice, who has witnessed the execution along with his assistant Sarah Lowell (Bibb) now start an investigation as to what when wrong and who done it.
Meanwhile, across town, the perp that sung is getting ready to receive a squadron of police visitors when he’s invited to escape his apartment and run towards an awaiting police car with a cop asleep at the wheel. Not his best decision for the day for be soon becomes Shelton’s prisoner and is on the fast path feeling just how mad Shelton is after all these years, in the processes being cut into many pieces while under an immobilizing drug which allows him to feel all the pain. It’s really a gruesome scene.
Rice soon arrests Shelton and the cat and mouse fun really begins with Shelton playing Rice like a fiddle. Shelton is soon moved to solitary confinement yet all the time more of Rice’s fellow associates as well as the judge and defense attorney on Shelton’s case are dying rather unpleasant and untimely deaths. Clearly Shelton is fully intent on eliminating those involved with the farce of a prosecution in his family’s murder and is saving Rice for last. Frankly if you find the visualization of a person’s head being blown up from a cell phone, this movie may not be for you.
During this cat and mouse game the message slowly but clearly comes through to Rice that justice isn’t in deal making and keeping your percentages up. Justice is in putting the bad boys away – a lesson Rice is in dire need of learning.
Director Gary Gray keeps the same high action and intensity levels as he did so well in The Italian Job. If you blink or have to go potty during this flick you’re going to miss a lot of the action. So, go easy on the soda and popcorn.
The ending, well, it’s not what I would have wanted or expected but you’re not going to be going to sleep during this movie or shortly thereafter. This flick is action packed excitement and definitely deserves the R rating it gets. Leave the kids at home and expect to be on the edge of your seat for most of the 2 hours of this flick!
I’m Don Rima, and that’s the way I saw it, From Where I Stand.
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