Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]

Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]

Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Actor: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Leslie Bibb, Michael Gambon, Viola Davis
Brand: Fox
Producer: Lucas Foster
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
Published: 2010-02-01
Blu-ray Release Date: 2010-02-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: N3122
Studio: Overture Films/Anchor Bay Entertainment
Product features:

Condition: New
Format: Blu-ray
Color; Widescreen

Blu-ray Reviews of Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: Three-and-a-half stars for a decent revenge thriller
Summary: 4 Stars

I've always loved revenge movies. Just as romantic comedies are a big favorite of many women (including my wife), I am a sucker for a great revenge flick! Some might say about revenge films the same as I do about rom-coms: they're all the same and 99.5% predictable. However, with F. Gary Gray's latest, "Law Abiding Citizen," he takes the revenge formula and gives it a twist. Rarely do we see in any revenge film, whether it's Death Wish, Eye For An Eye, "The Count of Monte Cristo," Man On Fire [Blu-ray], "Kill Bill," or the more recent Taken [Blu-ray], where the protagonist becomes so enraged over his/her loss that even though it's driven them to such an extreme as revenge, it never pushes them over that fine line of punishing those who didn't "have it coming" to them.

Well, in "Citizen," we meet Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) who's a simple family man, soldering away at his home desk as his adorable little daughter is stringing beads together to create a bracelet. With only a minute or two of dialogue between father and daughter, there's a knock at the door and Shelton goes to answer. Instantly the action begins as two robbers break in, incapacitate Shelton then proceed to rape and murder his wife as well as murdering his daughter. A month or two later, hot-shot prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is trying the murderers in Shelton's family homicide case. Rice regretfully admits to his mentor and boss District Attorney Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill, playing the usual smarmy trait invoked in most of his recent characters) that in order to keep his high conviction rate up to par and climbing, he accepted a deal with the main murderer, I mean, suspect Clarence Darby so that he could get a conviction of Darby's inept accomplice Rupert Ames, thus sending Ames to death row. However, when presenting the deal to Shelton, Rice explains that the only way to get a definite conviction at all is to take the deal with Darby, which would only result in him being given a measly five years in jail (for third degree murder). An emotional Shelton disagrees and begs to try for a conviction on both suspects since he knows Darby was the main perpetrator. Rice says the deal is already done and even though it disgusts Rice, he follows through with the deal, even being coerced into shaking Darby's hand outside of the courthouse, cameras flashing away. Then we see Shelton witness this, almost as terrified and betrayed as when he witnessed his wife being murdered, and that, my friends, is when the movie really kicks into gear. That is what pushes Shelton over the edge to exact a revenge plot that sends the entire city of Philadelphia into a panic.

Ten years later, Shelton not only takes revenge on the murderers of his family, he holds everyone accountable - from Darby's attorney all the way up to the mayor (Viola Davis) and the justice system itself. So, of course, that means he holds Rice accountable. The film stretches into an enjoyable cat-and-mouse game between Rice and Shelton, but, unlike those previous films I mentioned, there is no absolute good or evil here. The audience is left to feel that Rice can't necessarily be held accountable since he is "only doing his job," and it's difficult for the audience to hold conviction for Shelton, an innocent man who lost his entire family so violently. So, in order to ease the audience's minds, the writer Kurt Wimmer (Street Kings (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray], Ultraviolet [Blu-ray]) sets one particular scene that sets Rice and Shelton apart, assigning a good and an evil. Believe me, you'll know it when you see it. When this scene plays, the audience is left to ask: should a person(s) who unknowingly abetted a known felon be held accountable for the felon's actions? This predicament is explored in all kinds of media, even comic books (i.e., should Batman be held accountable for all the people the Joker has killed when he could have stopped him by killing him?). The answer is different for all of us and the scene with which I'm referring, screams, "No!" And in a lot of cases, they may be right. All I can say is that this movie's scene still didn't convince me to scream the negative in my mind. Even when it's shown that Shelton's past in black-ops helps explain his genius, all the while edging him more to the experienced "psychopath" status, it doesn't take away from the fact that Shelton's wife and daughter are no more innocent than the career-climbing, shallow prosecutor who took a plea bargain from a possible killer who could've easily been convicted in court. Nor should Shelton's wife and daughter's lives be pitted in the same category as their killers, Darby and Ames. While Shelton's methods are at times extreme, there is no measure or limit of pain for someone who has gone through such a loss. And anyone who's gone through such a loss feels he has nothing left to lose. This movie is a testament to that.

Still, the main question here (as with all revenge pics) is: Does his unfair loss justify all the death that he's caused? Sadly, I don't think a movie can truly answer this moral ambiguity. I say this because, in a movie most times, we the audience see the truth of the matter that the characters in the film did/do not see. In "Citizen," we see that Darby is the main killer of Shelton's family and therefore most of the audience have already agreed in their minds that he should be punished in some way and not given a plea bargain. But that is not what Rice knows in the film and so he makes the wrong decision which leaves a majority of the audience not liking his character; especially when we find out that he did it just so he could keep his 96% conviction rate to someday climb to gain D.A. status. The true test of morality in a film such as this comes when even the audience doesn't know whether the person under suspicion did the crime or not (case in point, Clint Eastwood's Mystic River [Blu-ray]). Only then are our morals truly tested.

When we know who the real culprit is, most of the audiences' opinions are already formed, leaving the rest of the movie hoping for the "good guy" to prevail and the "bad guy(s)" to face justice. That's why I sometimes enjoy revenge films. They're not always about trying to leave an indelible impression on the audience so that they continue to discuss the film hours after its ending. Mostly, revenge films are just genre action flicks where the good guy and bad guy duke it out. And while "Citizen" desperately attempts to be a morality tale of turning the avenger into a psychopath, and thus making the audience question revenge and whether the world is truly black and white, it doesn't live up to those films which do convey this question/message: "Mystic River," Munich (Widescreen Edition), and The Prestige [Blu-ray]. This film did a great job at the art of revenge but its ending was something to be desired. I feel like the writer tried too hard to make it into something it wasn't: a thinking-man's revenge thriller. The vengeance that Shelton takes on each of his prey is methodical but also fitting to the responsibility he believes they had in his family's injustice.

Overall, I really enjoyed "Law Abiding Citizen." While I loved the beginning and middle - and the pacing was excellent - the very ending was a little too morally self-righteous and unbelievable for me to swallow. Not only is it unbelievable about how Shelton continues his vengeance while still in prison, but what's most unbelievable is how Rice and Shelton come to a head at the end. Those last 15 minutes of the film while a little tense were, nevertheless, a bit droll but also mostly unfitting to a story that gave so much potential in its first 94 minutes. It seemed as if the writer planned on penning a great revenge thriller, but, at last minute, changed his mind and wanted to try to send some deep, affecting message. And while that works for films like "Mystic River" or "Munich" - movies where revenge (although prevalent) takes a backseat to morals and humanity - it just didn't for this film, where gore, violence, catchy one-liners and many different ways of killing someone was at the forefront.

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Description of Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - Blu-Ray Movie

The legal thriller meets the serial-killer shocker in Law Abiding Citizen. The story begins when home invaders kill Clyde Shelton's wife and daughter. The bereaved father (played by a thoroughly unsympathetic Gerard Butler) looks to slick Philly prosecutor Nick Rice (a low-key Jamie Foxx) to see that they receive the maximum sentence. Instead, the murderer, Ames, testifies against his accomplice, Darby, who gets the chair, while he gets 10 years. Upon his release, Ames' mutilated body turns up in an abandoned warehouse, and all roads lead to Shelton. Rice attempts to defend him, but his client makes it impossible--Shelton wants to go to prison--so he does time, but then members of Rice?s legal team start to die. The attorney suspects Shelton, but can't connect him to the crimes, so he races against the clock to save the lives of his assistant, Sarah (Leslie Bibb), D.A. Jonas (Bruce McGill), and his own wife and child. The movie may sound like a Yank reboot of the Japanese chiller Cure, in which an inmate kills from inside institutional walls, but plays more like a mash-up between The Silence of the Lambs, without the psychological complexity, and The Devil's Advocate, without the cynical giggles. F. Gary Gray got his start with hip-hop videos and urban action flicks, like Set It Off, until he hit the big time with his remake of The Italian Job. Law Abiding Citizen is a disappointing muddle from a director who's done better in the past and will surely do better in the future. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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