The Review: Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen 7/10

I watched Law Abiding Citizen a few days ago almost nine years to the day I had watched it for the first time. This movie walks a very fine line between cheesy unbelievability and harsh ass reality. Clyde Shelton is happily living his inventor life with his wife and daughter and moments later some dudes break in, tie him and his wife up, and do god knows what to them before killing them. Nick Rice is representing Shelton in court and mentions that one of the guys is taking a plea deal so he'll walk free. Shelton is like “But they raped and killed my family.” Rice is like “This is how it works. Sorry.” So one of the guys walks away super free and Shelton sees Rice shake the guys hand and vanishes. We fast forward ten years later and Rice has his wife and daughter and he heads off to see the execution of one of the guys. During the execution the guy says how the one that got off free is the one that did all the raping and uh killing. He gets injected and shit goes bad real fast. He starts bleeding and flailing before finally dying. Turns out someone switched the juice. Uh oh...?

The guy that got off free watches the TV showing how the execution went badly and laughs. He is with a half naked woman and there are drugs everywhere. He gets a call telling him cops are on the way. He rushes out but not before shooting at the cops for no reason. The caller guides him to a sleeping cop nearby and right before killing the guy he gets another call. The caller is Shelton and he is also the sleeping cop! He drugs the guy and goes full Saw on him. He cuts the guy up making sure he is conscious the entire time. There is some weak sauce evidence that Shelton is involved and as they approach his home he strips down butt booty ass naked and is taken away. While being interrogated Shelton starts making demands. Rice doesn't want to hear any of his shit and afterward finds out that Shelton sent the video of him cutting that dude up to Rice's family and they watched it.

Shelton starts making more demands and the body count rises. Rice's assistant gets blown up. Another dude gets buried alive. Shelton almost talks himself free in court and then laughs at the judge for almost letting a murderer free. The shit is crazy. The rest of the movie is Shelton setting up more attacks, getting in and out of prison, and scaring the entire city from his cell. Like I said, this is cheesy. But they have some super violent moments like when he stabs a dude to death in the neck with a spork. I hate the way this ended but it paints itself into such a corner that there was no other way it could have ended.

Jamie Foxx as Nicholas "Nick" Rice

Gerard Butler as Clyde Alexander Shelton

Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan

Bruce McGill as Jonas Cantrell

Leslie Bibb as Sarah Lowell

Michael Irby as Detective Garza

Gregory Itzin as Warden Iger

Regina Hall as Kelly Rice

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