Screenhead

I was actually really looking forward to this one, and given that I had such an array of movies to choose from today, it was kind of tough to finally settle on one.  But settle I did, and here I am, talking about Law Abiding Citizen with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler.

When a couple of random hoodlums break into Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)’s house, kill his daughter and kill (and possibly rape) his wife in the process, he gets a first hand look at the magnificent justice system, that’s willing to let one scumbag off with five years in exchange for sending another scumbag to death row.  Brokering the deal in question is hotshot attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), whose proudest achievement seems to be either his daughter or his ninety-six percent conviction rate.

Clyde, meanwhile, feels the system has let him down and thus launches off on a one man crusade to fix it by first tearing it to the ground in a series of horrendous remote-control murders.

About midway through the movie, I knew that they were going to have to cheat their metaphorical heinies off to get out of this one in anything resembling one piece.  They had set it up so clearly and so beautifully that Clyde Shelton was a remote control killing mastermind that, in order to win, the government was going to have to cheat itself BLIND.

But aside from the ethical and moral ramifications of watching your government toss out the rule book it wrote itself to satisfy its own vendetta against one man, Law Abiding Citizen is a fantastic, thought-provoking movie that ably combines a legal thriller with a mechanical engineering spectacular like Saw.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.  Picture Jigsaw in The Pelican Brief and you’ve got a pretty fair idea of what’s going on here.

Law Abiding Citizen is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a good long while–yeah, I know, I said that about Zombieland, too.  But they’re in different genres, so it’s still valid.  Oh, sure, there’s a lot of unpleasant things you could say about this movie.  I personally hated that ending, and watching Jamie Foxx’s regular stiff-necked pride throughout the whole thing, even as he was CONSTANTLY being showed up by Clyde was annoying to say the least.

And of course implausibility is simply a matter of course around here (how exactly did Clyde manage any of this stuff?  It assumes ridiculous sets of circumstances that are almost, but not quite, on par with magic.), but if you’ve got a really strong capacity for suspension of disbelief, then you’ll have an incredible time watching this.

Sci-fi buffs, I’m looking at you.

Despite the flaws, I had a great time watching Law Abiding Citizen, and as such, am holding a remote control connected to a bucket of salt and batteries that I have dunked the Screenhead Ten Scale’s feet in, and am forcing it to hand over a seven out of ten for a thought provoking thriller with a few glaring flaws.

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