A rich canvas of character actors ( Colm Meaney, Viola Davis) are mostly plot necessities. His battle-of-brains-and-wills scenes with Foxx don't have a lot of snap, and since those confrontations are the heart here, that drains some energy off the film.
But since he's the ultimate quarry in this blood feud, Nick must see those around him die at Clyde's gadget-guru hands.īutler gives Clyde a wicked glee at what he is doing, but only a hint of the humanity he lost when his wife and daughter were slain. Nick knows who is doing this, even locks up Clyde. Almost all of them have terrifying seconds to realize their fate. When he kills crooks and the legal eagles who kept them from justice, he makes them suffer.
Clyde may be a Law Abiding Citizen, but he's got gadget skills and a sadistic streak. Ten years later, when one of the killers is finally executed, his elaborate revenge begins.Ĭitizen is a "You don't know who you're messing with" thriller, like Taken. "In this job, your best asset is a short memory." But that's not Clyde. Nick is listening to his boss (Bruce McGill). "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove in court," Nick Rice tells a distraught Clyde. Jamie Foxx is the politically ambitious Philadelphia prosecutor who lets one of the killers get off easy so that the other will be executed. Gerard Butler has the title role, Clyde Shelton, a "tinkerer" who is stabbed during a home invasion.
Law abiding citizen summary movie#
It's the sort of movie that Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood might have made back in the day - a man survives the slaughter of his family by thugs and sets out to get even, and then some. Law Abiding Citizen is a glib, brutal and preposterous revenge fantasy, a take-the-law-in-your-own-hands rabble rouser that taps into a lot of fears and genuine gripes about the American legal system.