Guity pleasure mix of DEATH WISH by way of SAW

Rating: 7/10 (26 October 2009)

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (2009) **1/2 Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bib, Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin, Regina Hall, Viola Davis, Richard Portnow. Over-the-top guilty pleasure-inducing vengeance thriller with Butler out for some justifiable payback for the monstrously brutal murders of his family (ok, a decade later, but stick with it) and playing cat-and-mouse with stubborn ADA Foxx as he scrambles to figure out how he is doing it from behind bars! Echoes of DEATH WISH, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SAW for its 'torture porn' methods, the film finally runs on fumes in the final act (if you can't guess by then how Butler is doing what he is doing maybe film going isn't for you?) but credit Kurt Wimmer's sly screenplay and some nifty bang/boom/shudder set pieces by director F.Gary Gray keeps things chugging along before derailing into eye-rolling incredulity.