Hey folks, Harry here with a long time reviewer on AICN, Peter Blood, and his look at LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, which we showed here in Austin last Tuesday. I liked LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, but wasn't satisfied by it. The end doesn't live up to the promise of the movie before it. At least not to me. Anyway, you'll see my review later this week, here's the good Doctor's opinion...

Law Abiding Citizen is thrust upon theaters this weekend filled with an unhealthy amalgam like a new combo meal from McDonalds. Apparently all of the telephone polls, box office analysis and market research has decided that the American public wants to see a lame revenge film where an everyday family man goes berserk and tries to hold a city ransom from prison. I can hear the pitch meeting now...

Oh, and let's make sure we throw in Denzel... wait... he's not available?...oh, he read the script.. damn... get somebody else then... that Living Color guy.. Jamie Wayans or something. He can play the Assistant District Attorney who the everyman battles. See, this everyguy sees his wife and young daughter get killed during a home invasion, but then the justice system lets him down, he he goes all batshit crazy and holds the city of Philadelphia hostage and... here's the kicker... he does it all from prison because he lets them arrest him right away...cool; huh? Oh, and he's a gizmo guy who does all sorts of technical stuff, so it will be totally believable he can do that. And we need some really violent gore in there since horror films are back in right now... cool, we've got plenty of that. And explosions; everybody loves explosions. Hey maybe we can get Mel. Nah, he's too old to be the dad; a grandfather maybe. Ya know that guy from 300 kind of has the Mel thing going; give his people a call. We need a hot blond too.. maybe working for the District Attorney... doesn't matter who, but someone kinda recognizable; maybe some tv credits. Can we start shooting next week, we need a big Fall release? There's no script yet? Notaproblem; I know someone who can write the script while you shoot it... just shoot cool stuff and he'll work it into the plot. Yeah, he's big.. he did Ultraviolet the same way... we even let him direct that one... he didn't have anything but the title before the first day of shooting. We need some good character actors too for cops and the DA... somebody Irish for the copy... hey how about that Star Trek guy who was in the Commitments? He's probably pretty cheap.This is coming together great... I smell hit.
Unfortunately, the meeting that produced such a jumbled mess is probably more entertaining than what gets thrust at any unfortunate viewers of the film. This is a mean-spirited, completely idiotic, clueless film with no heart, no soul, no real plot, and absolutely nothing to recommend it. Let's start with Jamie Foxx; look Jamie, you were great in Ray, and totally deserved your Oscar, but don't think for a minute you can be Denzel, who you're obviously trying to be here. You can act, but you don't have anywhere near the cool charisma and relaxed presence needed to pull off the courtroom banter... you just come off as stiff, slightly bewildered and way out of your element. Please don't do it again.

Warning: Here There Be Spoilers.

As for the "plot", and I use that term loosely here, there are more holes than plot points. It's less of a plot, and more of a giant black hole with little story tidbits being randomly sucked into it. The set-up starts at the home of our "hero" Clyde (Gerard Butler)who's soldiering something (proving he's some sort of brilliant science guy) and talking to his (maybe 6 yr old) daughter while his wife makes dinner. There's a knock at the door, and suddenly, he's tied up and stabbed, along with his wife, while the daughter is carried away by one of the "robbers." I use quotes there, because these guys don't act like they're robbers; they just act like they're supposed to be bad guys and talk tough and be mean. It's actually a brutal scene, but it still makes no sense if they're really there to just rob the place. As is required by cliché, one of the robbers just wants to leave, but the real bad-ass has to take the girl. The whole thing plays like a bad remake based on rehearsals of a scene from a 70's Roger Corman film. The difference of course is that the Corman version would be over the top and fun, while this is serious and dull. We don't see enough to identify with the guy we're supposed to feel sorry for, and the way these guys break in, they act like hit men, so maybe he's really a bad guy as well. It's poorly executed on all levels and it sets the tone for the film.

So then our up-and-coming (we can tell, because everyone makes a point of saying so) Prosecutor Nick (Jamie Foxx) has a problem with the case against the two guys and takes a plea from the bad-ass to help get a death penalty conviction for the other idiot. Clyde walks off knowing the justice system failed him like it has so many others: insert important sounding music so we know this is supposed to be the theme of the film. Nick feels bad, but not very much, and goes home to his pregnant wife.

Flash forward ten years later and idiot #2 is about to die by lethal injection. Nick is now the Assistant D.A. and he's there watching rather than attending his daughter's cello recital. So now we have a portrait of a man who values career over family - yes, the clichés just keep on coming, folks. The injection goes horribly wrong as something toxic is mixed in with the Sodium Pentothal and idiot #2 flails around, veins bursting like he's about to go zombie. But this is a serious message action movie, so that doesn't happen. Instead, the cops all want to talk to dead idiot's ex-partner, but our hero Clyde has other plans. He talks bad-ass through an escape not too unlike those from Eagle Eye last year, leading him to a police car complete with sleeping donut junkie. Of course Nick is smarter than all the cops and realizes bad-ass doesn't really have any motive for making idiot #2's death more painful, but Clyde does. So while he and his team try to find Clyde, Clyde is busy knocking bad-ass out, clamping him to a medical table and telling him how he's going to chop him into small pieces. They find out Clyde has a lot of money and several buildings around town (although they don't know where most of them are because of some Panama financial treaty thing they refer to several times that sounds completely made up by a writer in search of an excuse) and again remind everyone he's some sort of electrical/mechanical genius.
Now, again, if this were an old 70's B-movie, I could buy all of it... it would be ridiculous, but fun, and then, next we'd see that Clyde has turned bad-ass into a cyborg to wreak his vengence upon the justice system that did him wrong. But we don't get that; because this is serious; we're delivering a message about the justice system; although we've already forgotten what that message is and we're only 15 minutes into the film. Instead, the cops find bad-ass all diced and sliced in a gratuitous gore scene. Oh, and it just happens to be in one of the buildings Clyde owns. So the cops all race to Clyde's mansion and he strips down naked (because he IS Gerard Butler after all and his contracts state he must show his ass at least once) and waits for them. Now, while he's waiting for them to burst in, he fiddles with what appear to be small mechanical wings, like something from a wire-frame flying toy, while a portion of a much larger wing appears on the wall behind him. Foreshadowing a daring Icarus like escape; right? No; we get no payoff from the set-up what-so-ever and no mention of winged anything is made ever again.

While looking through his house a number of law books are discovered (why the DA's office is searching the house with the cops we're not sure of) so we know Clyde is "up to something." But when we see him next, he's in jail...wait, no, make that prison, and Nick tries to get a confession out of him since there isn't a shred of physical evidence against him. He gives Nick an almost confession and Nick prepares to leave because he's apparently now also an idiot. Clyde taunts him and tells him he didn't really confess which any 6 yr old who's seen a single episode of Law & Order could have told him. Now, why the Assistant DA is trying to get the confession instead of the cops, we also don't quite know. Also, why he's immediately taken to prison isn't explained very well either, as I'm fairly sure Philly would have regional holding areas and not keep every person ever locked up in one big prison. Of course then it would take too long to get to the prison where much of the film takes place, so let's again ignore all logic, assume DAs and the police are all one big happy family and can do anything they want to when needed. Also, later, we're to assume that although Clyde is brilliant, he uses bomb techniques that weren't state of the art when they were used in Get Smart, that the police and DAs can't call City Hall to tell them someone is masquerading as a janitor, that the City of Philadelphia built a maximum security prison right up against an industrial park, that blowing up a prison is sanctioned by the police and DAs office, and that our genius has absolutely no security or safeguards on his secret bat-cave although he monitors everything else.
I could keep going, but hopefully you've realized what a total pile of crap this film is by now and will avoid it at all costs. On a scale of one to ten I give it a negative four for robbing me of two hours of my life and destroying a little more of my scant faith in the Hollywood System.

-Peter Blood