LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (18) ***
Justice is blind – and by the end of F Gary Gray's gruesome thriller, it's also horribly burned, dismembered and disembowelled as a family man turns the tables on the lawmakers who let him down, with the help of his good friend Semtex.
The moral conundrum that underpins Kurt Wimmer's screenplay is constantly obscured by graphic violence and relentlessly sadistic revenge fantasies played out by the central character on the denizens of Philadelphia.
His corruption at the hands of an unfair justice system and subsequent quest for retribution are supposed to blur the lines between good and evil, but the protagonists aren't sketched in sufficient detail to carry the story's flimsy convictions.
Gerard Butler has evidently been freeze-framing The Silence Of The Lambs as inspiration for his performance as the family man turned vigilante.
He chews lifelessly on every cliched line, while Jamie Foxx, as the crusading man of the law who must stop him, is just plain lifeless.
In a deeply unpleasant prologue, brilliant inventor Clyde Shelton (Butler) is at home, playing the doting father to his young daughter (Ksenia Hulayev), when two thugs break in, stab and restrain him and his wife (Brooke Mills) and go after the girl.
Clyde loses the two people he cares most about in this sorry world then, to add insult to unbearable injury, glory-chasing lead prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the perpetrators, agreeing a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against the accomplice.
"Some justice is better than no justice at all," he contends, caring not a jot about Clyde's suffering.
Ten years after the worst moment in his life, Clyde enacts his master plan to make Nick suffer just like he did, by attacking his colleagues Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill) and Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb) and the mayor (Viola Davis).
Clyde even involves Nick's wife Kelly (Regina Hall) and daughter Denise (Emerald-Angel Young), so the prosecutor tries to reason with him.
"You think your wife and daughter would feel good about you killing in their name?" he asks.
"My wife and daughter can't feel anything," replies the widower coldly. "They're dead."
When more people die while Clyde is safely tucked away in a prison cell, the prosecutor and cop pal Detective Dunnigan (Colm Meaney) face the terrifying possibility that their prime suspect has an accomplice on the outside.
Law Abiding Citizen plays out largely as expected, with lashings of blood and gore to remind us that Clyde is a psychopath who doesn't think twice about gutting his cellmate to pass the time.
The hunt for the accomplice is a classic Scooby-Doo caper, replete with a ridiculous pay-off that is impossible to take seriously.
Scenes between Butler and Foxx lack tension as both actors go through the motions, content to let director Gray have his pyrotechnic-laden fun.
Justice is bland.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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