hopinet

Law Abiding Citizen

2nd December 2009

I quite liked the idea of Law abiding Citizen and to be honest the trailer didn’t look too bad but I just had a niggling doubt before I went to see it that perhaps it wouldn’t be that great, perhaps the effect of ‘Gamer’ is still with me. If Gerard Butler thought making that movie was a good idea I will have doubts about any movie he ever makes.

The basic plot of Law abiding Citizen is that an ordinary man’s family are killed and he sees it all happen so knows who and what exactly happened. Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) the ‘ordinary bloke’ in question feels let down by the justice system due to bargaining with one of the accused, he feels justice isn’t served and that the outcome was more about keeping good statistics than about trying to get justice. This is a good comment on modern society who seemed to be obsessed with stats in all walks of life e.g. how quickly are you seen at hospital, what’s the pass mark of an exams, etc. So may be it’s actually an action movie that also has something worthy to comment about.

I think underneath all the killing and blowing things up there is this serious message but it’s just completely lost. I would like to have seen 10mins of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) as a ‘normal’ person before he goes slightly off the rails. I think you would get more involved with character and realize that he has a message that he’s trying to get across.

Overall though it’s not a bad action movie (a massive improvement on Gamer for Butler) but as with so many Hollywood movies this year I was left thinking ‘I’ve seen it all before and done better’ and ‘there’s got to be more to movies than this’.

One final warning: It’s not the best ending to a movie I ever seen

More information at IMDB