Law Abiding Citizen **

About halfway through Law Abiding Citizen we learn that the antagonist is some sort of mastermind pseudo-Jigsaw who was only pretending to be your run-of-the-mill engineer. This character, Clyde Shelton (if that is his real name), is portrayed by Gerard Butler as if he knows he’s in ho-hum thriller that’s meant to make us contemplate the (in)justice of the American judicial system. By this point in the story, Shelton has been imprisoned for murdering Clarence Darby (Christian Stolte), the man who broke into his home ten years earlier and murdered his wife and child as he looked on helplessly. We are meant to feel conflicted about Shelton—we sympathize with his loss but cannot condone his escalating use of violence, and we wonder why his genius doesn’t apply to preventing home invasions.

Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is Philadelphia’s District Attorney and the man who brokered the deal that gave Darby limited jail time. He is a husband and father, and he while he wants nothing more than to protect his family, he is consistently outsmarted by Shelton, who holds Rice responsible for effectively allowing the man who murdered his wife and child to manipulate the system.

The film is directed by F. Gary Gray, whose last feature was Be Cool, probably the worst adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel to date. Law Abiding Citizen is a better film than that, but it’s riddled with so many problems that it’s increasingly frustrating to watch. Why does Shelton wait ten years to start offing people? I guess it happens to coincide with the execution of one of the men convicted for the death of his family, so it gives him a chance to tamper with the lethal injection formula. He says it’s not for revenge, so it’s about the judicial system, right? But then why must he corrupt the execution, which seems to be just in his mind? It’s simply not painful enough?

As the climax approaches, the film throws a couple of twists and turns at us, but nothing too revelatory. The primary problem is that by the end of the movie, Shelton has orchestrated so many heinous acts that we no longer feel much sympathy toward him. Sure, we’re peeved about the way the justice system rewards criminals for ratting on their criminal buddies. But Shelton is a criminal too. He’s apparently always been a killer. He graduates to full-blown terrorist. And now he’s an asshole as well.