Gallows Humor

Rating: Null/10 (4 July 2019)

The strength of "Law Abiding Citizen" is the great cinematography and the fine performances. The film is a thriller with the landscape of Philadelphia figuring prominently in the action. Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler are outstanding as the savvy city prosecutor, Nice Rice, and the mastermind of a set of killings, Clyde Shelton.
While the filmmakers were able to build good suspense in allowing the audience to slowly figure out how Clyde is engineering so many destructive acts from inside a prison, there were some flaws in the screenplay. Clyde was said to have a confederate, but that strand of the story was never resolved. Also, the ending did not seem in character for both Nick and Clyde. The screenwriter's imagination that was ingenious in the dastardly plots of Clyde failed him with the film's ending.
One of the best scenes in the film was the courtroom drama in which Clyde demonstrated to the judge the hypocrisy of the court system. His banter with the judge was spellbinding as he very nearly walked out of the courtroom a free man, then abruptly changed the dynamic to ensure that he would be sent to prison. There was also a certain irony in Gerard Butler's transformation from the apparently mild-mannered Clyde into a monster. It was clear that there were intended moments of dark comedy, especially in the prison scenes that could best be described as "gallows humor."
The film was made in 2009, prior to the enormous wave of film sequels and franchises. "Law Abiding Citizen" had the potential for at least one good sequel if the film had remained true to the moral ambiguity of the two lead characters. But the unfortunate ending that rendered complex characters driven by competing ethical motivations into a standard good-versus-evil world view ended all hopes for another episode of law and order in Philly.