Interesting B movie, shamelessly trashy, at times smart

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2010)

"The state calls its own violence 'law', but that of the individual 'crime'." - Max Stirner
Today's trashy B movies often say more about the world than high-minded fare by celebrated directors. Case in point the low budget flicks of Romero, Assayas and Gerard Butler's latest trashy action flick, "Gamer".
"Law Abiding Citizen" is a bit harder to get a reading on. On one hand it's another silly anarchist fantasy, in which a father (Butler) whose family is murdered blows the world to hell because the Law let the criminals free (ie the terrorist chic of "Death Wish", "Dirty Harry", "Fight Club", "The Brave One", "Dark Knight", "V For Vendetta", "Taken" etc), whilst on the other it's a pretty ambiguous (ie the writers are totally confused) look at terrorism, law, justice and the collapse of moral clarity.
So here we have Gerard Butler playing a weapons expert who unintentionally becomes symbolic of both Western militarism and medieval tribalism. When his women (his daughter and wife) are killed and raped, this sexual violation activates Butler's masculine code of honour, prompting him to open up a can of high-tech woop ass on Philadelphia's elite. The reason for his terrorism? He believes the city (as personified by actor Jamie Foxx) is intrinsically selfish, looking out for its own interests and profits. The goal of Butler's terrorism? To teach the state to be more violent and less lenient toward criminals.
So what's weird is that this is the only pop-fascist film I can think of where the terrorist is terrorising people to teach them to be more violent toward terrorists. The Gerard Butler character is not just exploding into righteous, "purifying violence", but exploding into violence to teach Jamie Foxx to set aside law, morality, personal gain, profits, wealth etc in favour for swift, violent retaliation. This is a very George Bush, Dick Cheney styled American fantasy: when someone breaks into your home, kills your women, children and downs your World Trade Centres, don't think, just put aside your personal interests and kill them.
To highlight this, the film has Jamie Foxx being sworn in (his hand on the Bible) to the position of District Attorney an hour into the film. He takes an oath to stand up for the law, personal rights etc, but then immediately becomes a divine saviour, magically solving puzzles and guiltlessly transgressing the very laws he swore to uphold, breaking into private property, snooping in records etc all for the greater good.
What's bizarre is the way the Jamie Foxx character learns to sidestep Butler's lesson. Butler wants Foxx to "put aside his personal desires, don't debate and just kill", but when the time comes for Foxx to kill Butler, Foxx's character finds a way to win without pulling the trigger himself. He literally infiltrates Butler's terrorist cell, plants Butler's own bomb under his bed and tricks Butler into detonating the bomb on himself.
So you're left with a truly weird ending in which the hero (Jamie Foxx) is still a seemingly nice family guy whose pursuit of self interests leads to terrorism and who is still too morally righteous to embrace cold violence, preferring instead innocuous law breaking, subterfuge and neo-war styled infiltration. In other words he is the modern embodiment of the Law, in permanent possession of an unacknowledged shadow. This is the complete opposite of all the other films in our recent wave of post Gulf War "revenge movies" (it's probably not a coincidence that the last wave of revenge movies coincided with Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam).
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.