Review for Law Abiding Citizen
March 11th 2010 20:20
This movie stars Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler who get HUGE kudos from me for the expansion of their acting abilities with this movie. The movie grips you from the moment it starts with a brutal home invasion scene by these two scumballs with Gerard, his little girl, and wife horribly violated and it just rips your heart out. Next we see Jamie, who is the lawyer handling the case for Gerard, who is the only survivor of the brutal attack. Jamie tells Gerard that they had to make a deal with "the devil" i.e. the scumbag who raped and murdered his wife and little girl. When Gerard protests, saying that he was an eye witness (he blacked out, won't hold up in court) and various other reasons why they SHOULD go to trial, not only does Jamie say that they are not going to trial but that the deal he made with the criminal is final and will set him free! Gerard now blames Jamie for not trying as hard as he could to avenge him. (Isn't our legal system great?!) Hence, the deep philosophical meaning of the title of this movie. Of course, here is Gerard, a "law abiding citizen", gets screwed royally and this piece of scumbag gets to live his life as if nothing ever happened! Well, what makes this movie so cool is, it is written like we all would have written it and how things should be if something like this happened to someone we loved dearly. Fast forward to ten years later (which just so happens to be about the time that the appeals process runs out for death sentenced criminals). Gerard gets the guy who is in jail about to be executed (easy target!). Then, he goes after the scumbag who walked away with the deal. Oddly but written beautifully, we see the deal-making scumbag get what is coming to him very early on (very, very graphically!) which momentarily leaves you wondering "O.K., if the two bad guys are dead this early in the movie, what else could we possibly watch?" Oh, boy, dumb question! There is much, much more to watch! All with you glued to the edge of your seat! I am a big "Saw" movie buff and I shook nervously more in this movie than I did in Saw! It turns out that Gerard is like this super smart engineer who can invent things to help assassins kill people. Since the justice system failed him, then to him, the ENTIRE system is on "the list", including Jamie. It becomes one of the coolest "cat and mouse" game ever played and so very well acted. There is a cool twist at the end, and the ending will leave you with a lot of great discussion topics of right and wrong, the justice system, how tragic pain never heals, personal vendettas, etc. Great movie!
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