Weekly Review -- Constructing damnation

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) -- Legal thrillers that serve up original stories are rarities; legal thrillers that fill these stories with twists, mix up the heroes and the villains and make the audience debate their themes are a needle in a haystack. These facts render this film a genuine revelation. After his wife and daughter are brutally murdered during a home invasion, engineer Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is horrified to learn that ambitious district attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) has made a deal that sends the actual killer to prison on a lighter conviction. Ten years later, Shelton decides to teach the justice system a lesson about justice, first killing the two intruders and then setting his sights on everyone involved in the prosecution of the case... Besides never letting up with suspense, the film sets forth a plethora of morality issues. Sure, there are holes in the screenplay, an obvious one being the lack of FBI involvement when a city such as Philadelphia is threatened, but, for its faults, the film is very clever in its plot machinations. As merciless as some of the scenes in Law Abiding Citizen are -- and they are not for the faint of heart -- it is the build-up to and the aftermath of these acts that constitutes the core of the story. Who is the real villain? Are there any heroes at all, or does that question hinge on the degree of our society's humanity? Are Clyde's actions, however violent, justified within any sense of motivation? Butler and Foxx have dynamic chemistry as the two antagonists, who would undoubtedly be on the same side under different circumstances. Butler is intimidating as an everyman who spirals out of control when he loses the people he loves the most. Foxx forces us to rightfully question Rice, who is not exactly a good guy through and through, getting caught up in the system that he is supposed to be fighting and forgetting the "little people" one too many times. Honorable mentions go to Viola Davis as the tough-as-nails mayor and Bruce McGill as Rice's exasperated mentor. Law Abiding Citizen is a welcome detour from remakes, sequels and similar tack-ons overpopulating silver screens. There are not enough films nowadays that sow seeds of discussion or take into account the intelligence of the audience, who certainly appreciate something other than a formulaic genre piece and who need provocative works that make us think.

8/10