Law abiding citizen

Year of release : 2009

 

Run time : 1h44min

 

Genre : Action / Thriller

 

Cast : Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Regina Hall, Viola Davis, Leslie Bibb, Bruce McGill

 

 

Clyde Shelton is a man who loves his family. One night,he experiences a home invasion,which leaves him without that family he loves so much.

 

His lawyer,afraid he might lose the case,makes a deal with the lawyer of the perpetrators,one of them being the one who r@ped and k!lled his wife and daughter. The irony is,the criminal lies he was the innocent one,and the other one did those atrocious things to the family.

The perpetrator who was there only to rob them gets 10 years in jail and the lethal injection,while the r@pist and criminal,gets to walk free,after 5 years!

 

10 years later,the two perpetrators die in gruesome ways. The police suspect the husband.

The husband has a series of demands he wants met before he confesses.

 

All this starts a cat and mouse game between the police and the husband.

I personally enjoyed the movie, and was on the husband's side until he went full crazy,as the law seemed weak. It also bothered me they didn't give their best to keep the perpetrators in jail,like they didn't care enough,but they were up in arms and outraged ,when this guy took justice into his own hands. It just made them unlikeable to me. Up to a point, I actually wanted the husband to get away with it.

I liked the places where they filmed at and the costumes.

The movie was directed by F. Gary Gray (he directed music videos like TLC’s Waterfalls and Outkast’s Ms. Jackson, and movies like “Set if off” from 1996) and written by Kurt Wimmer (he wrote and directed the movie Equilibrium).

 

The acting was good, the only one I felt didn't give 100% being one of my favorites, Gerard Butler (he’s not good at showing sorrow, at being scared and desperate).

If I recall correctly, I think Jamie Foxx was supposed to play the husband and Gerard Butler the lawyer, but Butler wanted to play the villain.

The soundtrack was good.

The visual effects were good, I loved the one at the end with the fire starting around and at the back of Clyde, looking like wings of fire. 

The movie received negative reviews (with 26% positive Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews and a 34 critics score on Metacritic ), with critics complaining about the ending, considered one of the worst in movie history.

The movie grossed 127.9 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 53 million dollars, being a success, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score being at 75%, while the Metacritic user / audience score at 6.7.

 

Rating : Worth a watch !