[DVD] Law Abiding Citizen [Uncut] (2009)

Law Abiding Citizen

Directed by F. Gary Gray
Starring Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler
DVD Release 02/16/2010

I watch a lot of movies. In my life I guess I have watched two-three-four thousand movies. I’m not sure. However, I am sure that of all those movies I have seen, Law Abiding Citizen possesses some of the most illogical narrative and plot devices that I have ever experienced. The movie still manages to be (just barely) entertaining, but all I can recommend is watching it for the pleasure of seeing pure plotting insanity.

Gerald Butler is Clyde Shelton and at the beginning of the movie his wife and daughter are savagely raped and murdered by two men during a robbery/home invasion. As horrible as that is, it is a pretty standard plot device.

Jamie Foxx is Nick Rice. He is a hot shot Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia who is egotistically infatuated with his conviction rating (96% son). The problem is that he is not really that great of a prosecutor (inferred), but rather cuts deals with criminals to net easy convictions instead of appropriate jail sentences. Furthermore, if Rice can’t see an easy conviction he’ll pass the case on to an underling.

ADA Rice has the good fortune of trying the case for the Shelton murders. This very early stage is where the movie begins to unravel. Clyde Shelton witnessed the break in, remembers being stabbed, remembers looking into his wife’s dying eyes, but because he was losing blood, he passed out and did not actually see his daughter murdered – though Clyde did see one of the men pick his daughter up after raping his wife. Rice decides to offer a deal to one of the defendants: plead to a lesser charge in exchange for a confession and testimony against the other defendant. You know, typical Law & Orderstuff.

Two problems here:

• The guy offered the lighter sentence is the one that actually committed the rape and murders. The other guy is a freak-out lackey who couldn’t say loud enough or often enough that he didn’t do the killing or the raping. So, he wouldn’t turn first? Or in fact offer to flip first thing? Why did Super ADA decide to offer the most repulsive of the two criminals?
• The main bad guy – the guy that did the worst – is a big hairy, sweaty, drooling hoodlum. In the world of Law Abiding Citizen is there no such thing as forensics evidence? This dude raped two people and drooled and slobbered all over both of them. Are you telling me there was not enough physical evidence to go along with an eye witness account to go after a conviction? Fuuuuck.

Once ADA Nick decides to cut the deal, he has to meet with Clyde to give him the news. At the outset of the meeting Rice breaks the ice by assuring Clyde that he knows about the small fortune that Clyde spent to bring the murderers to justice. And then – wait, what? Since when does one have to pay for the District Attorney’s office to prosecute a fucking murderer? This was not a civil case, this was the prosecutor’s office. Obviously once ADA Nick breaks the news, Clyde goes apeshit. And who could blame him? He apparently paid a small fortune out of his pocket to bribe a public office to prosecute two men who were witnessed killing and raping a woman and a child while leaving their DNA all over the place. The DA’s office refused to go for it (even after this substantial bribe) and instead allowed for one of the men to get off with just three years in prison.

The movie then turns into a revenge caper and then into a chase-the-terrorist movie as Clyde’s revenge expands past killers to include janitors, scuba instructors, cell mates, and the entire legal system. In fact, instead of a movie, Law Abiding Citizen feels exactly like some sort of Law & Order + 24 mash-up. One of the most ridiculous elements of the movie is the range of authority granted to ADA Nick. It is not police detectives that track down clues and jump in helicopters to go to a crime scene – it is ADA Nick and his boss, the District Attorney Jack Dalton from MacGuyver. ADA Nick commands police labs and officers and then investigates the clues that he turns up on his own and never bothers to throw a bone, you know, to the guys carrying a gun.

There is one cop in the movie by way of Detective Chief Petty Officer Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney). But he mostly follows ADA Nick around like a lost puppy and occasionally pulls his gun and laughs.

A Fernando Valenzuela screwball is thrown to the viewer with the discovery that Clyde Shelton is some sort of government contractor that is able to kill people with his mind. I shit you not; maybe not in the way you think, but true none-the-less. That does help to explain how Clyde is able to continue his revenge/terrorist spree while locked in solitary confinement in prison. In fact, it’s better that you continue to believe that instead of discovering the truth to his ability and/or accomplice.

Below are some other observations that are spoiler-heavy and so protected. Click SHOW to view. show

To me it seems the original script for Law Abiding Citizen (where does that name ever come from? It was said once, incongruently, in the film) probably had two law enforcement roles: one a cop, the other a prosecutor. Someone probably pointed out that was too much like Law & Order* and having three stars would be too expensive anyway, so the thing was re-written to make Jamie Foxx the Super ADA with the powers of both an attorney and a police chief. I have to say it didn’t really work. The movie is entertaining only for the farcical deaths and and massive plot holes.

*Be sure to check out the PopBunker.net appearance on The Paul & Spike Show this week. In it, Law & Order is awarded my most overrated television show of the 90s.

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