Amidst a dreary September month of porous movies, along came the preview for a genuine thriller, Law Abiding Citizen. The film begins as Gerard Butler’s wife and daughter are murdered in quick order without so much as the slightest plot development offering a glimpse into their lives. Jamie Foxx is the latest flashy Johnny-come-lately district attorney seeking to rise to the top like the fat refrigerated in gravy. To become recognized as the finest or at least the most efficient public attorney, Foxx takes one short cut after another. He allows the more murderous or culpable felons to strike deals reducing their prison sentences in exchange for a testimony against the lesser offender. This way both men will serve prison sentences and there will be a guaranteed verdict of guilty. This worked fine until Gerard Butler caught Foxx and the murderer of his wife and child in a revealing handshake demonstrating their guilt and severe corruption.
A genius inventor, Butler earns millions and spent ten years crafting one of the most diabolical revenge schemes ever conceived. His mission is not exclusively to kill, although dozens are murdered in the process (including the judge, several district attorneys, and the criminals themselves). Butler’s motive is to wreak havoc on the justice system that betrays the Constitution and allows murderers to enjoy clemency rather than just punishment on account of the failures of the legal system and its shepherds.
Butler’s character tortures his wife and daughter’s murderer by dismembering him. He ensures the killer will suffer throughout by injecting him with adrenaline to guarantee his cognizance during the sickening affair. With ten years of planning, digging tunnels, building secret hideouts, monitoring the schedules of justice officials, and learning every known legal precedent with which to defend himself, Butler survives many near death experiences while causing pain and hardship all around the guilty attorneys, judges, etc.
The real question is whether or not the legal officials deserved to be threatened, murdered, or punished at all. Butler seems to take pride, even while being incinerated by his own napalm, in the fact that Foxx’s character has elected to change his ways. The film ends with an ironic twist although viewers are more apt to be swept up by Butler’s vengeful antics than by Foxx’s reprehensible actions.
Law Abiding Citizen is as philosophical as Dostoevskii’s novel Crime and Punishment. Both question the meaning of punishment, and challenge the notion that a penalty can be too severe or not severe enough. What punishment should an attorney receive for imprisoning both of a family’s murderers in a corrupt fashion? If one man simply witnessed a slaying why should he have been executed by both Foxx’s justice system and Butler’s cunning? The entire film is loaded with murky actions and questionable decisions. To make the movie even better, it is hard not to laugh when Butler eliminates certain characters. Their deaths seem like just desserts. This notion, however psychotic sounding will have to wait. A+.
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