Amazing movie ruined by a ridiculous ending

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2012)

This film is simply amazing. It shows how extremely far one will go to satisfy his sense of justice, after he was disappointed by a bureaucratic legal system. Basically, Clyde was a victim of a home invasion by 2 criminals who raped and killed his wife and daughter and left him dying. He is also a technician for the CIA, where he invents various gadgets for use by field agents. One of the criminals gets the lethal injection while the other walks free after confessing to the crime and basically blaming everything on his partner, whereas it was him that was the "brains" in the home invasion. So Clyde goes on a rampage, first messing up the lethal injection of the convicted-to-death criminal, so he will suffer more upon dying, then torturing the other criminal vigorously and then going after the people who were involved in the trial. At every turn he outsmarts agent Nick, who is trying to stop Clyde. The plot is simply amazing, filled with twists and amazing dialogue, without having the "bad" and "good" guy, but instead two people who are defending their own values and sense of justice.
Most will find this film amazing, as did I, however the ending is what disappoints. This film could have gone to the top of my list, but instead it lies somewhere in the middle, simply because the whole movie is ruined by the last 20 minutes. In a very weird, unconventional and unrealistic way, agent Nick, discovers miraculously how Clyde was conducting his crimes while he was in a prison cell (the deus machina comes in the form of Nick's assistant/partner who uses conducts in the Colombian government (?) to find out about the purchases that Clyde has done in the past which leads them to an abandoned warehouse, where they stumble upon, again miraculously, on a secret passage going to the prison cell of Clyde). The obsession of writer Kurt Wimmer, with the "good and righteous guys" always winning ruins otherwise good films and plots, such as this. My advice is, watch the movie up until the last 20 minutes and then turn it off and imagine your own ending. Otherwise, you'll be bitterly disappointed. Kurt Wimmer does the same mistake in Salt, where the ending is again ridiculously devised in a way that the "good guys" will win.