El vengador

Let's face it. Because a person is capable of pulling off the kinds of things done here, doesn't make the likelihood any greater. There is so much precision and luck involved in making things work that it would take a god pulling strings to allow these things to fall so easily into place. Even a silent partner is not going to do the job. I enjoyed the setup but the lengths gone through for revenge really pull it apart for me. The guy has so much power that he is completely in control. There would be a point in law enforcement where they would finally say, "Screw you!" The technology would have taken a fortune beyond imagination to work out. While I like the actors in this film, I can't recommend it's far fetched totality. Done in a more controlled and believable way, you have a stunner. It's just too much. And the ending is a real weakness.

This is a movie that's extremely fun to watch in the theaters because you get to hear and see everyone's reaction to each of his killings. The best one had people actually saying loudly "wow" and "oh my god!".

What drew me to the movie was the fact that the hero wasn't going around killing people with his bare hands or face to face. He was doing it with his mind, with careful planning, and deft precision. That was something refreshing to see. I can totally relate to his feelings of anger over the flaws in the justice system and his desire to take matters into his own hands - to make things right.

The ending was disappointing but the rest of the film was not and I liked it overall.

Almost everyone agrees. Law Abiding Citizen is a great movie but the ending sucks.

The problem is, with about 30 minutes to go, the movie wants us to stop cheering on Clyde (Gerry Butler) and suddenly start thinking of Nick (Jamie Foxx) as the hero. That's not going to work, the audience has just invested about 90 minutes of wanting Clyde to continue with his vengeance. Damn right too.

The plot should have continued to its logical conclusion. Clyde was trying to teach Nick a lesson, that the system was so broken that it could only be fixed by being destroyed first. Rather than the squeaky-Hollywood-ending-slop they served up, here's what should have happened...

In the solitary confinement cell at the end, Jamie Foxx's character Nick should have taken the cell-phone from Clyde then remote-detonated the bomb at city hall, blowing up the mayor, the brass, the whole rotten system, then gone off to watch his daughter's cello recital.

Now, that ending would have been really insane, but it would have taken the movie to its logical conclusion. Nick's conversion would have been complete. As an ending, it would be right up there with Jimmy Cagney at the end of White Heat, 'Made it Ma, top of the world!' Morally dubious, yes, but it would have given us a bona-fide classic. It would be rating 9.8 here on IMDb rather than this insipid seven-point-bleh.

Oh, and the movie loses a point for Gerard Butler not using his own voice. Gerry is a Scot and has a fine Glasgow accent, he should use it.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN has all the trademarks of a great film. A non-linear plot, plenty to say about the state of the world today, some tough performances and explosive sequences. Best of all, it blurs the line between good and evil so that you're never quite sure who you're supposed to root for, which guy's the villain and which guy's the hero.

Gerard Butler stars as the ordinary man whose family is killed in a burglary gone wrong. Butler then undergoes a startling transformation as he sets up a campaign of revenge against all those who failed to bring the killers to justice. The film goes from there, starting off dark and becoming increasingly more bleak as the running time goes on.

It has plenty of incident to keep it running along, and some great scenes: Butler's manipulation of the prison regulations, for instance, or the way he manages to wage his vendetta from the INTERIOR of his prison cell. But, along the way, the film's sense of realism diminishes until we end up with a completely ludicrous event at the end which is designed to bring closure. It's not on par with, say, EAGLE EYE for suspension of disbelief, but it's getting there. It's just a shame, as with some tighter writing this could have been a truly great movie. It turns out to be an intriguing oddity, instead.

Butler is good as the 'bad guy', effectively channelling some of that Leonidas rage. But, as usual, Jamie Foxx is completely out of his depth as the lawyer. He's a vacuum of talent, an empty space in the middle of the movie surrounded by other, better, more seasoned performers. It's a shame, as the combination of rubbish actor and rubbish ending scupper this movie's best intentions.

At no point do I ever side with the so called "protagonist" played by Jamie Fox. This movie does not convey the "hero" to have any values that you would want to root for. Other than that glaring problem, Gerard Butler does a great job playing the vigilante