MOVIE OF THE WEEK (10/16/09): LAW ABIDING CITIZEN

Mark Whitacre (Colm Meaney) looks on, but Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) has just about driven the once overconfident prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) to his breaking point in the Saw meets Falling Down like crime thriller that is LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Credit: John Baer/Overture Films.

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Regina Hall, Gregory Itzen, Christian Stotle, Annie Corley, Joshua Stewart and Viola Davis

WRITER: Kurt Wimmer

DIRECTOR: F. Gary Gray

WEB SITE: www.lawabidingcitizenfilm.com

THE PLOT: Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a dedicated family man. He's a self-made man ... And he's a law-abiding citizen. So, it should come as no surprise that when he watches his wife and daughter get murdered right in front of his face during a home invasion led by the sinister Darby (Christian Stolte), he wants justice.

"Justice," however, comes in the form of a plea deal for Darby that only puts him in jail for a few years while his partner, who may not have carried out the most vicious part of the attack, gets the death penalty. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a very ambitious up-and-coming prosecutor, tries to tell Clyde that the deal is a good one as the evidence - or rather, what he could prove with it - might not result in jail time for either assailant.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be good enough as the execution of Darby's partner goes a bit rougher than it should ... And once Darby gets a rather brutal comeuppance, Nick and his crew figure out that Clyde might just be their man. Away he goes, peacefully - after all, he is by his own admission, a law abiding citizen.

But when the murders continue once he is locked up, Clyde begins to reveal just how deadly being a law abiding citizen can be - and the system must pay as a result.

THE TAKE: There are a couple of things that savee Law Abiding Citizen from being another here today, gone tomorrow action thriller. Sure, the Saw-like doses of violence in certain spots will be a turn off for some; others may have a problem with the, for all intents and purposes, implausibility of how Clyde is able to do what he does (although this film provides him a means that makes it seem plausible as possible).

What is hard to argue, however, is just how convincing Butler is at making Clyde seem like a man who is very mad as opposed to a mad man. While Foxx and company play well off Butler's performance - when they goad him, he plays it cool; when they try to appease him, he makes them suffer further as he broods silently, slipping away from the humanity that was the very thing that made him go down this path in the first place. Clyde's actions are so wrong yet, as the film proceeds, one can see how they are increasingly right in his mind, all of which brings the audience back to the same starting point: What would you do if you were in his situation? While he will forever likely be known as King Leonidas to his core fans, Butler proves there's much more to his acting talent than being able to yell "Sparta!" and a good six-pack of abs.

Credit director F. Gary Gray for keeping things moving along in a timely fashion, but also for helping to shape a world where no action is made without a motivation, where each scene is set to bring you into each character's world and nothing is revealed too quickly or needlessly. "Intelligence" might seem like the wrong word in regards to a film like Law Abiding Citizen, but that's the word that applies to the handling of its subject matter.

All things considered, the only thing Law Abiding Citizen may be guilty of is raising the bar for other thrillers to step their game up.

RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):