“Law Abiding Citizen”
D: F. Gary Gray
S: Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx

MANILA, Philippines—“Whatever happened to right and wrong?” bellows Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), the grief-stricken protagonist of F. Gary Gray’s tension-filled action-drama, “Law Abiding Citizen.” He is then dragged off to prison after he takes matters into his own hands and exacts a measure of dog-eat-dog vengeance against the remorseless robbers who murdered his wife and daughter 10 years ago.

Lessons

Shelton took to task the whole justice system for allowing mercy to supersede retribution. Thereafter, the brilliant former engineer delivers a threat to Assistant District Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx): “I’m just warming up,” Clyde sneers, then explains further: “Lessons that aren’t learned on blood are easily forgotten.”

Unfortunately, Nick doesn’t take the warning seriously—after all, Clyde’s actions are limited by his incarceration. In no time, however, the city of Philadelphia is engulfed in a state of terror as dead bodies begin to pile up—and Nick’s family just might be Clyde’s next target!

Gray spins an edge-of-your-seat yarn that for the most part relies on Butler’s strum und drang machismo and Foxx’s good guy-bad guy moral ambiguity to mask the production’s weaknesses.

Butler and Foxx’s dramatic square-off gets an added boost from the strong performances of Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan, Leslie Bibb as Nick’s assistant, Annie Corley as the presiding judge, and Viola Davis as the city mayor caught in the crossfire of Clyde’s “moral cleansing.”

Clockwork precision

The movie is rife with scientific implausibilities, however: It’s not easy for viewers to suspend disbelief that Clyde’s brilliance—or his 10-year head start—is enough to explain his clockwork precision and logistical sharpness, given the circumstances he’s in (no spoilers here).

Just the same, the production’s zippy action and dramatic sequences keep the tension consistently high and the exposition exciting. But, a film can raise one ethical question after another without getting overly didactic, can’t it?