Fun... at a price

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2009)

Fun... at a price
Vengeance is a dish.... But this one was definitively overcooked in the microwave. A movie of this kind may go over the top - and Butler does that in spades - but you still can have fun. Never mind the loopholes in the script the size of a batcave - how on earth could our good guys be in time to set up up Butler's demise while they were in City Hall at the same time as him, and how did they find the time to evacuate the inmates before the whole thing blew up? Well, let's call it the Spielberg Syndrome. The ability to turn a well-made film in the last scenes into a Disney'ed ending.
Butler changes from a symphathetic widower and victim of the System into a monster, virtually turning into a brother of Darby. So be it, and we close our eyes and have fun - sort of - with the movie and how this clever guy keeps stepping ahead of Foxx. The way in which the faux judge gets her ear full is genuinely scary and that's the point, of course.
Scarier still, is how Foxx turns into an even scarier monster - either on purpose by director and screenwriter, or because of sheer stupidity. For most of the movie Foxx remains a deeply unsymphathetic A.D.A. who still thinks his monstrous plea-bargaining that set off the whole chain of events was correct. A career mover.
But take the last big scene. Let's overlook for a moment the sheer impossibility of being in the same location as Butler in City Hall and yet capable of personally setting up his demise in the prison. Anybody remembering a block full of inmates and prison guards? I mean, when the building blows up the WHOLE thing goes ka-boom. Including inmates and guards, thus probably killing more "innocent" people than even Butler dreamed of. And then going to a recital in true Spielberg fashion - all's well that ends well. Mmmm... we could even build a new Disney World attraction around this theme.
As an aside, if Butler was such a genius with gizmo's and gadgetry wouldn't he have built a simple detector to be sure that nobody has entered his batcave while he was on his shopping sprees?
So, was it Gray's and Wimmer's idea all along to show that Butler and Foxx were the the same side of the same coin all along? Doubtful; script was too bad for such subtleties. So, was it a bad movie? Probably, but fun to watch, at a price.
Maybe this year's Christmas message is that we should be very, very distrustful of A.D.A.'s. Mmm.... now THAT's a thought we can live with.