Decent Revenge Flick, But Turn Your Brain Off

Rating: 6/10 (19 February 2010)

I wouldn't exactly call myself a big fan of revenge flicks, but I am a fan of the concept. Here we have a great concept: a man who loses his family and watches the man responsible for this get a minimal sentence for the crime, blames the justice system and takes revenge on them...while being imprisoned. I groaned when I knew what to expect, someone with another blow-hard message about justice in the U.S. Still, the fact the main character is imprisoned and still killing off people intrigued me. And for the most part, it is a pretty entertaining film.
What makes this film particularly entertaining is its relentless pace. It's almost non-stop. Despite being predictable and the trailers giving away too much, there are several entertaining action scenes here. It help that Gerard Butler once again proves he's a charming action star. This is the kind of stuff he should be doing. Jaime Foxx on the other hand is less entertaining as a success-hungry lawyer.
Unfortunately, as entertaining as the film is, much of it leaves something to be desired. The writing is mediocre and much of what happens during the action scenes is beyond unbelievable. I understand suspension of disbelief, and believe me I can probably perform such a thing more so than most people, but this film stretched it. And not just in the way the action scenes play out, but in the message of the film. Butler's character is so blood lusty by the end of the film, and Foxx's character seems to have had so little character growth, that you really don't care for any of these characters and their senses of justice. It's a good concept, but one that is DOA.
This leads me to the two biggest problems in the film: the fact that there is no real protagonist and the ending. A film needs a protagonist of some sort, especially and action film. And, in a revenge film, we're supposed to support the character in their quest for vengeance. Here, it is almost impossible to care about Butler's character, as he has killed a number of innocent characters and essentially become the villain that we are supposed to hate. Likewise, by the end, Foxx seems to have learned nothing from the ordeal, or at least has not grown as a character in any satisfying way. And then there is the ending, which is so ridiculous one wonders how it can be acceptable. While the whole thing was kinda cool in a special fx kind of way, the message the film was trying to tell is shot right out the window. Way to go.
Now, I realize there is quite a bit of criticism here, and that's only because, for such a preachy film you'd really have to be an anarchist to support its message. But the cat and mouse games in the film are actually well written and the quest for the truth is interesting enough to sustain interest. Sure, there are huge leaps of logic here (instead of transferring the man out of the city, they keep him imprisoned in it? ), but if you can suspend your belief for a while, there is some decent action here and even a little suspense. It's not a great movie by far, but if you want to kill some time with a fairly entertaining film, this should suffice as the new film of the week.