Why are we so okay with protagonists who take the law into their own hands and murder to get revenge?

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2010)

I probably wouldn't have gone to see Law Abiding Citizen if it hadn't been for my next-door neighbor. I didn't think that I would like it based on the commercials, but he wanted to go see it, so we went, and I liked it enough to give it a middle-of-the-road rating.
I think it succeeded in being suspenseful. We constantly wanted to know how Gerard Butler's character was able to carry out his deadly plans while he was locked away in jail, under constant surveillance. The stakes got higher and so did the mystery and intrigue. There were also several "wow" scenes that made me jump and say 'wow.' They were mostly disgusted wows, but they were still wows. So that's what prevented this movie from being a one star, because it's fun to watch exciting, suspenseful movies.
On the other hand, Law Abiding Citizen fell into some standard Hollywood blockbuster writing traps. In the quest to make the movie suspenseful, the screenwriter made a few things a little bit ridiculous and unbelievable: like how the mayor of Philadelphia shut down the whole city because she was afraid of one criminal. Secondly, a few lines of dialogue meant to be serious and dramatic came off as majorly cheesy- in fact, some audience members laughed out loud a couple times at what were supposed to be serious moments. Also finally, Butler's character was basically godlike in his abilities and I'm just not so sure one man, no matter how angry or genius he is, could have planned out so many details of this plan. Okay, so obviously it is a movie and we're supposed to remember that in order to enjoy it better.
But I must mention one final disappointment with the film before I critique its take-away message. I was pretty let down by the revelation of how Butler's character carried out his plan while in jail. I won't spoil the surprise, but it was simply too hokey and cliché to fully satisfy the curiosity that built throughout the entire movie, in my opinion.
To the overarching theme now. I don't know if it was meant to be ambiguous of if we were supposed to sympathize/side with Butler. Bad men broke into his house and killed his daughter then raped and killed his wife all in front of Butler's eyes, then nearly killed him. When Jamie Foxx, the District Attorney, decides to make a deal with one of the bad guys to really nail the other one in court, Butler feels betrayed by the judicial system, gets irate and plans to get even with everybody ten years later. Anyway, Butler mercilessly tortures the bad guys to death, kills judges, blows up lawyers, and stabs inmates with sporks in jail as payback. The audience in my theater cheered at the torture and applauded when the female judge got shot in the face.
Is it okay to take the law into your own hands when you feel unjustly treated? Is torture okay? Is it okay to kill innocent people to make a point? Do criminals deserve to be put to death? I answer no to all of these questions, but I think it puts me in the minority in my country. (And, according to the reactions of my theater, I know it did in my audience too.) Sure, what the bad guys did was seriously awful and despicable and of course I'm disgusted by it, completely against it. But torture is never ever okay, in my opinion, no matter how bad of a guy the torturee is.
Plus, as Foxx's character says in the movie, the US judicial system is run on the concept that it's not what you know, but it's what you can prove in court. This is the only way that innocent people on trial are protected, and even then we still end up putting away (or executing) the wrong person. Butler's character failed to understand that. In the end, he turned out to be just as messed up and crooked as the people who killed his family, I think.
So I'm skeptical about the meaning behind Law Abiding Citizen and am uneasy with the fact that it made money because people in this country agreed with its principles. Hopefully many moviegoers questioned some of this stuff and thought, like I did, that Butler's character was seriously messed up. Again, morality aside, this movie succeeded in being suspenseful.