Moral Compasses Beware! You May Not Leave Unbent.

Rating: 10/10 (28 August 2014)

I watched this film in theaters. Perhaps, I'm not as sophisticated as the other folks here (or, perhaps, coming from a family of spooks and as a victim of similar circumstances to who I consider the protagonist, anti-hero figure played by Butler), I see this film in a completely alternative light.
The complaints of the to reviews appear to be that the audience sides with the seeming antagonist, Butler. To them, we should never want to side with such a sadistic monster. We should want to feel sexual voyeuristic pleasure/stimulation at the rape. We should NOT praise the antagonist, Butler for the actions against his family, or the people who destroyed a meaningful justice. But, really, who are we kidding, that wasn't the point of the film at all, now was it? The title: Law Abiding Citizen, says something about the character played but Butler. He suffers a grievous loss: his wife, his daughter. When he goes through the process of trusting the system, trusting those sworn to protect, instead of meeting the rightful just ends he and his family deserve, the true monster being punished for his crimes, we see the system break down and fail this family. The audience is intended to feel compassion for this person, to feel sympathy and a sense of comradery with this seeming anti-hero.
The film is indeed dark. It's breaking the expected norms: It's akin to a dark comic book vigilante film, and in many ways takes those dark stories and their characters dark roads of vengeance a step further.
The film asks us a question: When the system fails us, when it drives us to the brink, what might one person do to get the justice the innocent deserve? It's about following all of the rules only to be shafted by what has been reported in recent years: not a corruption of knowing intention, but a corruption of disinterested malfeasance. People do not care enough about rightful justice to see it be fulfilled.
The real "enemy" or "antagonist" in the film is really meant to be Foxx's character, a prosecutor so concerned with his conviction record that he allows himself to blur the lines between "justice" and "injustice". We recognize that he's been doing it for a great deal of time. One doesn't suddenly start blurring one's morality chart overnight. It's a long and dedicated process of corruption. It's a slippery slope, and Foxx's character appears to have taken it. He promises, swears to Shelton to bring him and his family "justice", but the justice he brings is weak. It's not a failed conviction in court -- it is not two people getting off because the testimony and case against them was not strong enough, we never got that far, he makes a deal with the devil, he takes the petty thief for the true monster. It becomes the story of a corrupt, broken legal system, our system. It is a story making us question our civic values and philosophically ponder the lines of justice. We know who the true villain of the story is: the murderer, the man who single-handedly kills Shelton's wife. The next villain is Foxx's character: the selfish hubris and pride of a man concerned only with his success -- trading justice for personal gain. The victim is Shelton who takes steps right out of a Greek tragedy to recoup his losses, and we find ourselves in final support for the anti-hero, Shelton.
Butler and Foxx provide excellent emotion. You feel yourself becoming affixed to the character. You WANT Shelton to win, but you also feel, the whole time, that you shouldn't be. You know he's in the wrong too, that what he's doing is somehow malfeasance, but you can't stop yourself from caring about him. You want Shelton to teach those corrupt and apathetic figures to suddenly gain an understanding of what pain feels like. Shelton isn't trying to destroy Foxx or anyone else (other than the true villain; aside from punishing his compatriot who should have stopped him), he's trying to teach them a lesson: to care about the victims and not themselves. He's teaching them to feel pain and loss. He's teaching them to hurt and feel pain, to no longer be disconnected from the justice they serve.
In the end, I suspect these viewers miss the underlying theme of the story, a theme going back to Greek Drama and Epics. When the gods of Olympus no longer serve us, when we fight against the terrors of the world and nature, what are we left to do but take matters into our own hands or die? Shelton represents the human desire to not surrender to an injustice, but to be consumed by grief and revenge. It teaches us that our moral compasses can be bent into a truly awkward stance, and we learn quite a bit about our human nature in the process. Perhaps, the reviewers were more terrified with what they found in themselves, than anything happening on screen? This film is for a mature audience (age being beside the points). Go in with an open mind and be prepared for a psychological trip down a hole even the White Rabbit would find queer.