Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx

Gerard Butler stars as Clide Shelton, the lone survivor of a home invasion that saw his wife and young daughter brutally murdered. As the case reaches court Clide witnesses what he believes to be an even greater crime; that his own lawyer (Jamie Foxx) brokers a plea deal in exchange for a lenient sentence in an effort to keep his own career untarnished. Snap forward ten years and Clide’s plans for true justice begin to surface.

I’ve got to admit, I wasn’t holding out much hope for this movie. Following a poorly edited trailer full of explosions and “attention grabbing” one-liners, not to mention it following closely behind the recent raft of vigilante thrillers I thought that Law Abiding Citizen would sit somewhere around the mediocre mark at best.

What I got, however was quite a surprise. Thankfully what the trailers didn’t show was a number of clever and original twists and turns that really give the movie a nice pace. As well as that, the movie was actually shot really well, contrary to what the trailers had lead me to believe. Like I said, the pace was great, the plot was easy to follow without being patronising and the acting and direction, on the whole, were slick. Another bonus is that they didn’t hold back and took advantage of the film being an 18 certificate. In one scene a prisoner is stabbed to death with an unlikely tool with no cut aways and no skimping on the red dye number 5. That said, they didn’t go over the top. In a torture scene they did the right thing and left the really gruesome stuff to the imagination and avoided making a gratuitous gore fest. Sure the way that people get picked off is a little bit “Saw” but it is executed (pardon the pun) to a much higher standard. Traps are elaborate but not totally unfeasible.

There were problems though. Gerard Butler’s American accent is simply diabolical. Why, why, why won’t Hollywood realise that if your lead actor can’t do an American accent, it’s not the end of the world!? Write him as a foreigner. It just doesn’t matter. It’s certainly a lot more credible than forcing a Scott to tarnish his otherwise admirable performance with a forced, un-natural accent. Have we learned nothing from Jason Statham!? Okay I don’t think he can act regardless of what accent he uses but you get the point.

Another flaw was the ending. I don’t want to give away any spoilers because over all this is still a good movie that I recommend seeing but the ending seemed a bit… off. I think that this is probably due to the cat being let out of the bag as to how Clide was able to carry out his plans far too early. Once his method is revealed you get 20 or so minutes where all the tension has been taken away and this causes the ending to be somewhat deflated. Also, how you get to that ending involves a bit of a shark jump where damning evidence arrives via e-mail, somehow via a character that died 2 scenes previous. (Techies/geeks: When this scene plays, look out for Jamie Fox clearly using Windows Vista on his MacBook Pro.)

All things considered, though, Law Abiding Citizen is a good movie despite it’s flaws and if you’re looking for some good old fashioned Hollywood entertainment with a bit of a twist then I definitely recommend it.

Verdict: