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Bizarre in its action, audacious in its kill devices, powerfully dramatic in its visual design, begrudgingly effective. "Law Abiding Citizen," proceeding with the full confidence of decades of Hollywood's most lurid spectacles of gory violence as its base, strides forward on seven-league boots, supported by a cleverly conceived basic story concept and spectacular, if only barely credible, action events. With Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler performing at urgency max and a solidly convincing cast, the plot surges with an intrinsic momentum from confrontations so explosive with a man's hatred that you are left to either accept it in awe or to chuckle in defense against the writer and director's bold and boundless expressions of murder and mutilation. Actually, plausibility goes on hold after just a bit when it becomes obvious that this movie isn't interested in having you sit there looking for it. This isn't about plausibility. It's about lurching you into psychological escape mode early on and just letting your gripping sense of outrage bounce back and forth from the aggrieved protagonist to his gaudy methods of retribution. In no time, you give up on where to place your sympathies. In this tale of diabolical revenge, a convict, from his cell, engineers a killing campaign which terrorizes the Philadelphia police and justice departments. It all started when this man, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), once an upright, honest family man, who lost his wife and daughter during a brutal home intrusion by inhuman thugs. When the killers are captured, a rising young city prosecutor, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), is assigned to the case. Much to his chagrin, however, his boss orders him to plea bargain with one of the accomplices to rat on another participant in return for a light sentence. Clyde is shocked. His wife and child had been stabbed to death before his eyes and one of the killers is to go free after a short sentence. Now ten years later, after a detailed, rigged lethal injection execution goes awry, Clyde manages to capture the now released attacker of his family and put him to death by grisly slow dismemberment torture. Clyde Shelton boldly steps forward and confesses to the killing. Sentenced to prison, he nonetheless gets in a chilling threat to Nick: Fix the screwed-up system of justice or else the major figures in that trial of long ago will die. Somehow he manages to begin implementing this threat. Those individuals are found dead one by one. People associated with them are in terror. This is a genius sociopath operating, apparently from his prison cell. Nick, and only Nick, can stop it, but how? This killer is always one step ahead of him. And Nick's own family is now targeted as is the entire justice and police department. You can indeed be quite exhausted by this movie. Yes, it can be criticized from a variety of standpoints. But its capabilities in entertaining you with unusual vigor is not one of them. "Law Abiding Citizen" (my 0-10 quality rating: 7) Genre: Psychological Thriller. Director: F. Gary Gray Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer Cast: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney, Leslie Bibb, Michael Irby, Regina Hall, Viola Davis. Time: 1 hr., 48 min. Rating: R (strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive vulgarity)
