Want some well done over-the-top action? Law Abiding Citizen isn't the droid you're looking for.

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 2010)

Sorry, Law Abiding Citizen, but I'm sadly not able to stay interested in a movie that so blatantly abandons logic at the drop of a hat. The first half of this film was reasonable if cliché, but when most of the plot has taken place 20 minutes in, it was obviously going to be a struggle to fill out the remaining running time without boring the audience. Unfortunately, Law Abiding Citizen manages to be boring AND ridiculous. In between scenes that I found myself drifting off during, the absurdities piled on until I had completely checked out before the final climax. The generic ending didn't even begin to help things. As much as I like Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx and don't mind seeing them on screen, some things really bothered me. For instance, Jamie Foxx plays a lawyer, so why is he being involved in every aspect of the investigation as if he was a detective and a member of the police dept? I like to call this the CSI effect, they want to show all the clues and leads and yet in real life they would not have the DA be anywhere near these aspects of the crime scene, especially handling evidence, and ESPECIALLY seeing as how he is emotionally involved and connected to the victims. I mean, he could have been a suspect if they wanted to spin it that way! And why aren't the police keeping an eye on the prisoner at all times that has somehow continued carrying out hits on people even while in jail? They don't have a spare video camera to keep on him? And they don't bother to do a background check on this man after the men responsible for his family dying are murdered? You know, maybe look up records of what land he owns and such? The absurdities get much worse from there (trust me), but adding to the crazy tone changes of this film is the considerable gore. At least with a movie like SAW I am going in expecting to see disgusting acts and can prepare accordingly, but when I pop in a crime thriller I don't exactly sign up to see things like a man get tortured via circular saw tearing apart his legs or another man get stabbed repeatedly in the throat with a t-bone. It's ridiculous and even as a desensitized film-goer it turned me off. Beneath all this was a decent point about the way our legal system breaks down and lets true criminals off the hook. Law Abiding Citizen would have been better served coming up with a better second and third act instead of relying on excessive violence and over the top plot twists that only serve to hide the messages it wants to promote.