A case of far too much overkill

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2009)

**SPOILERS** In what at first looked like a "Death Wish" clone the movie "A Law Abiding Citizan" turns the victim of a home invasion-where his both wife and daughter were brutally murdered-into a mad dog psycho killer. Not only that but as we soon see this victim of violence's murderous as well as sadistic actions are so gross and shocking that they suppress even those of the most crazed foreign as well as domestic terrorists that this nation has ever been confronted with!
Clyde Shelton, Gerald Butler, the survivor of the home invasion at first lets justice run its course in the prosecution of the two thugs who murdered his family Clarence Darby, Christian Stolte, and Rupert Ames, Josh Stewart. It's when the actual killers of Clyde's wife and daughter-Clarence Darby-decided to turn evidence again his innocent, in not murdering the two, partner Ames that he's given a five year sentence with Ames getting the death penalty. This has Clyde blow a fuse and take out his anger and later vengeance not only on his and his families attackers and murderers but the US Jusitice Department as well! Feeling that the assistant Philadelphia D.A Nick Rice, Jamie Foxx, fell down on the job in letting Darby get get off with a light sentence Clyde spends the next ten years planning to not only murder both Darby as well as Ames, who's in fact to be executed, but Rice and his fellow members in the city's D.A and Police Departments!
As we, and D.A Rice, soon find out Clyde is not only crazy but an electronic genius as well as master escape artist! Clyde uses those talents to not only murder, in the most gruesome ways possible, Darby but Ames as well. This when Ames was in the process of being put to death, via lethal injection, by the state! It wasn't enough that Ames was to be put to death but Clyde had to make sure that he suffers the worst kind of death by secretly switching the more or less merciful drugs that were to kill Ames, who had nothing to do with the murder of Cyde's wife & daughter, with a concoction that had him have his veins pop out and blood vessels burst to the point where most of those witnessing his execution had to run from the death chamber before they passed out from fright!
By far Clyde's most deadly attacks were saved for those in the Philadelphia Justice System murdering some dozen assistant D.A 's judges and even Darby's lawyer in his war against those who helped get Darby off on a plea bargain! Not attempting to avoid arrest Clyde in fact got himself arrested in order to be put in the hole, solitary confinement, after murdering his cell-mate with a-I kid you not- leftover T-bone stake! It's from his jail cell that Clyde secretly conducted his one man war against the Philadelphia Justice Department with no one, in and out of the prison, having any idea how he was doing it!
***SPOILER ALERT**** Clyde's bizarre as well as murderous actions didn't win anyone in the audience over to him. In fact you felt far more sympathetic towards the two thugs, Darby & Ames, who started Clyde on this murderous rampage then towards Clyde himself in his total disregard for human life which was far worse then what his family's killers did. When we finally find out just how this criminal mastermind-Clyde Shelton-was able to pull all these murders off, while behind bars, you realized that it wasn't that he was so smart but that those in the D.A's office, including D.A Nick Rice, as well as the police and prison administrators were so damn stupid! In them not being able to figure out, which should have been very obvious to them right from the start, just how Clyde was actually doing it!
The film's mindless and confusing ending was the cherry on top of the cake for this turkey of a movie with Rice finally figuring out how Clyde was able to pull his evil plan off in part with him bing influenced by the writings of 19th Century German military genius and philosopher Von Clausewitz. Something that would have Von Clausewitz in him being even remotely connected to an insane and whacked person like Clyde turn, or better yet spin, in his grave!