Overture Films | USA | 108 mins
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
It’s a good thing one man revenge stories are in these days (see amnesiac hitmans and Jigsaws for reference), because this schlocky, overwrought, sloppy, patronizing, unintelligent, non-factual, blood-soaked, wrong-sided bastardization of a film will (and already has) made a killing at the box office (pun only halfway intended).
All this critic wanted upon entering the theater Friday night, having paid my $8.75 to see F. Gary Gray‘s latest, Law Abiding Citizen, a Blacklist screenplay from Kurt Wimmer, was something fun even if it was a little silly. After all, the film’s been brewing for a few years now, with talent the likes of Frank Darabount attached at one point or another.
And it’s a good thing I am a law abiding citizen (for the most part), because I don’t know what I would’ve done during this film had I not been.
Citizen tells the story of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), a man who watches his wife and daughter get massacred in front of him, and his lawyer, Nick Rice (Jaime Foxx), a man with a young family and a extremely high conviction rate, who makes a plea with the murderers in order to achieve “some justice,” his reasoning being “some justice is better than no justice at all.” Shelton’s convinced his testimony will stand up in court, Rice is convinced it will not (Shelton blacked out during the assault). Rice makes the hard decision. Shelton gets sore about it. Really sore.
Like “let me formulate a plan to teach the justice system” sore, taking 10 years to do so and do so”biblically.”
Gray and company rely completely on the pure violence of the opening scene (and a silly handmade bracelet) to justify (and then not justify?) Shelton’s impossibly uneven actions of retribution. It’s not enough that he kills the two bad guys who killed his family in the most horrible ways possible (it’s hard to guess which one’s worse), so he continues to kill everyone who ever had anything to do with his case – which, or course, winds up being everybody within a 5-block radius of this film. I’m surprised seats in my movie theater didn’t start exploding. Finally (get ready to be surprised) it falls to Shelton himself who, in his vengeance, has become part of the system he despises so.
What? Can you believe that? Me neither.
It’s not that the message isn’t an apt one – it is. But it’s been preached before, again and again and again through much tighter, smarter, much less hypocritical films starring much better actors, or just-as-talented actors NOT giving the worst performances of their careers. Who’s exactly to blame for this it’s hard to say; the actors of course but was not Gray, the director, their to direct the performances. How’d Butler’s hamfisted-ness get through to post production?
Did no one want to tell Foxx his tough-guy thing wouldn’t work completely if he wanted to properly convey the family-man side of his character? It looks as though no one told much of anything to anyone else. Because, had their been communication, this movie would have been much, much better. Hell, even Bruce McGill, one of the most reliable character actors alive, is God awful in this thing, looking constantly as though he just never got around to reading the script for this one.
Oscar nominee Viola Davis sports a role as one of the dumbest, crudest city mayors in the history of cinema. At one point, she suggests putting a cop at every street corner to “reassure” the people. Last time I checked, when there’s a cop on every street corner it usually means a riot of some kind or the possibility of one. Stress tends to increase rather than decrease.
And how, exactly, does the state detain Shelton at the film’s beginning? After the first murder they immediately drive to his house due to his motive (father of the deceased), and he surrenders. Minutes later, after a failed interrogation by Rice (why is the assistant D.A. interrogating anyway?), they declare they “have no evidence” on Shelton and proceed to send him to a jail cell.
What? What’s going on here?
It is not just that the film is poorly made and implausible whilst keeping a straight face; it’s the way it goes about it. Much in the same vein of how Adam Sandler’s I Now Pronounce Chuck and Larry abuses homosexual stereotypes to get laughs for an hour and a half than shakes a finger at those laughing for being homophobic with a wholesome message of tolerance, Citizen revels in the thrill of torture and revenge for an hour and a half, all to turn around and take back its bloodlust, declaring it just as bad as Foxx’s moral ambiguity.
Unfortunately, it is far, far, far worse than Rice’ moral ambiguity. The Foxx character is the most wholesome character in this whole mess to begin with. By making a smart call and striking a plea for “some justice,” he brings about the end of several innocent lives? What did he do wrong anyway?
Who are we suppose to be rooting for? Gray (and Wimmer) paint Rice as the villain for the first half, and then the hero in the second half (kind of). So are viewers supposed to simply switch around and root for opposing teams without more reason than “this is what the filmmakers sort of want”? Note that towards the end of the film, Rice’s cop partner (which is weird because Rice is a lawyer) asks him about Shelton’s civil rights, to which Rice responds: “Fuck his civil rights.” Is that an evil thing to say? What’s the intention?
Earlier on, Shelton intelligently argues that he may receive bail to the “corrupt” judge, who allowed (whatever that means) the plea to go through ten years ago, and she agrees. First of all, there’s next-to-no evidence against him (as already admitted by Rice’s people) and the statutes Shelton references are legitimate. Upon allowing bail, Shelton accuses her of being corrupt just like everyone else, letting “a murderer walk out the door.”
But I know, I get it. It’s “the system must pay.” Not any one person. Take down the system. Cool. And then what? Chaos right? I remember another movie where the bad guy believed that – his name was the Joker. And it was pretty obvious that, though he had his points, he was insane and certainly the evil party. Maybe Rice (or Shelton) should have put on make up and a purple suit to get the point across better.
And while the end of this disaster suggests as much, the point is moot and the sides shifted. There are no good guys and the bad guys are all psychopaths. Anyone innocent has been killed and killed brutally.
It might as well be a movie about the apocalypse with the kind of moroseness it constantly offers. And all for what? A cliched message on corruption? Just watch The Verdict or The Rainmaker or A Few Good Men or anything else with a courtroom in it.
Luckily, the upcoming films actually about the apocalypse aren’t directed by F. Gary Gray and don’t star Gerard Butler.
1 out of 10
Did you see LAC? What did you think? Do you agree?