A tame climax to a potential thriller...

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2011)

Recently,I watched Law Abiding Citizen (I liked the film title,nothing could have defined the film better than this!) on television,though the plot was good,the story was progressing very well and the motive for revenge was established;but being a scriptwriter myself,I felt that the film could have been even better and somewhere,somehow,something didn't connect with me.
1)In the film,I clearly remember Clyde (Gerard Butler)making an emphatic point that the end would be Biblical but I found nothing of that sort really happening! All I found was that in the end a righteous man was persecuted and the unrighteous prevailed! For starters, Law Abiding Citizen is about two principal characters Clyde and Nick(Jamie Foxx).Nick becomes the focal point of the film when he knowingly partakes in the miscarriage of justice in the brutal massacre of Clyde's family which is responsible for Clyde's transformation from a family-loving man and a law abiding citizen to a man unleashing his wrath and fury against the system.
2)I felt that in the narrative of the film, if the director chose to metamorphose Clyde's life in the span of ten years then Nick's life should also have been marred by a life-changing incident,like say for instance if he had lost his first-born to a serial child killer where the killers got away with lightly for the crime and despite all this he kept his sanity,the end would have been justified at Clyde's death.
3)Alternately,perhaps if somewhere mid-way during the film by a twist of circumstances if Nick's family would also have met a similar fate as Clyde's;perhaps he loses his daughter by some hound on the run which in turn would leave Nick shattered, then the climax could have very well been an open-ended one and a probable dialogue I imagine is Clyde telling Nick,"So how are you feeling Nick? We're even...!" Perhaps,this film could have had a sequel too where Nick is waging his battle against the system in Law Abiding Citizen-II.
4)And as a viewer what I found even strange was that while Clyde burns, Nick is shown enjoying a cello performance by his daughter!! I mean... the message is not positive..Nick cannot be exonerated for a crime which festered and manifested itself in the form of Clyde! Do you agree? What do you have to say about it?
Sonyaa, www.sonyaa-random-musings.blogspot.com