Eye Candy #164 - "Law Abiding Citizen"

Law Abiding Citizen: Not your standard “Death Wish” revenge flick. When Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) watches one of the men who murdered his wife and daughter go free as part of a plea bargain agreement, he uses his background as a CIA thinktank planner to teach those responsible a lesson (it involves killing a lot of them, so it’s hard to tell if the lesson really took). Opposing him is the attorney responsible for the plea bargain, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), who is more concerned about his success rate than absolute justice. Contrived within an inch of its life, the film follows Rice trying to defuse Shelton’s master plan - to overthrow the American judicial system which he deems to be a failure and destroy everyone responsible for what he believes to be a miscarriage of justice. And into this moral quandary we are launched as the filmmakers make it hard to root for either man (the lawyer did get the killer off, Clyde kills anyone he feels is connected to the failure of justice). So instead of being made to choose sides, we‘re just observers watching it all play out knowing that regardless of the outcome, justice will still either have failed or will have been destroyed along with many other lives. So we get to choose between “suck“ and “suckier“. It’s a watchable enough movie, if not terribly deep. On a positive note, it’s nice to see Colm Meaney on screen, as well as the lovely Leslie Bibb. Woodchuck sez, “Middle of the road.”