He dispatches the thugs, willingly goes to prison and starts doing dinner theater Hannibal Lecter for Mr. His character, Clyde Shelton, returns 10 years after the death of his family to tie up some loose ends. Butler, for his part, displays a surliness that many in Hollywood seem to mistake for charisma, and suffers the anguish of violent bereavement as if it were an annoying gastrointestinal ailment. Foxx, who is cashing in on his Oscar rather than going after a second one. This does not seem like much of a stretch for Mr. Foxx’s character, is slick and ambitious, proud of his 96 percent conviction rate and quite sure that he’s the cleverest and coolest person in the room. It’s about the cat-and-mouse game between two very smart guys, and it’s perfectly happy to be as dumb as it wants. Gary Gray (“The Italian Job”), wears its preposterousness with a certain pride.

Though it sometimes puts on a serious face, this movie, directed with snarling, snappish style by F. And it has less ethical gravity than any three of the “Saw” movies. Foxx, the prosecutor who made that deal, thinks that the system, however imperfect, did its job.īut really, “Law Abiding Citizen” has about as much to say about real-life legal issues as “Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen” had to say about defense policy. Butler, playing a family man whose wife and daughter were murdered by thugs, feels he was let down by the system, which gave one of the thugs a light sentence in exchange for testimony against the other thug, who was sentenced to death. “Law Abiding Citizen,” a blunt and sadistic revenge thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, occasionally pauses from the mayhem to stage a solemn debate about law, justice and morality.

Law abiding citizen review