Jamie Foxx Movie:

Editorial Review:
The legal thriller meets the serial-killer shocker in Law Abiding Citizen. The story begins when home invaders kill Clyde Shelton's wife and daughter. The bereaved father (played by a thoroughly unsympathetic Gerard Butler) looks to slick Philly prosecutor Nick Rice (a low-key Jamie Foxx) to see that they receive the maximum sentence. Instead, the murderer, Ames, testifies against his accomplice, Darby, who gets the chair, while he gets 10 years. Upon his release, Ames' mutilated body turns up in an abandoned warehouse, and all roads lead to Shelton. Rice attempts to defend him, but his client makes it impossible--Shelton wants to go to prison--so he does time, but then members of Rice’s legal team start to die. The attorney suspects Shelton, but can't connect him to the crimes, so he races against the clock to save the lives of his assistant, Sarah (Leslie Bibb), D.A. Jonas (Bruce McGill), and his own wife and child. The movie may sound like a Yank reboot of the Japanese chiller Cure, in which an inmate kills from inside institutional walls, but plays more like a mash-up between The Silence of the Lambs, without the psychological complexity, and The Devil's Advocate, without the cynical giggles. F. Gary Gray got his start with hip-hop videos and urban action flicks, like Set It Off, until he hit the big time with his remake of The Italian Job. Law Abiding Citizen is a disappointing muddle from a director who's done better in the past and will surely do better in the future. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Law Abiding Citizen [Theatrical Release] Reviews:
Not so law abiding citizen on the rampage...
2009-12-16 - Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx star in "Law Abiding Citizen", which is directed by Felix Gary Gray (The Negotiator, The Italian Job). This highly improbable, but still quite entertaining movie, is about Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), whose family is killed. When the legal process doesn't satisfy his sense of justice he takes the whole system to task, and systematically begins to murder everyone associated with the convictions, including magistrates, prosecutors, et cetera. Clyde has a special talent as a weapons expert, and he employs this talent in his carefully planned and timed murder spree. All the time we wonder how this man, who is jailed, is managing to set up one murder after another, and how he can justify murdering so many people who are just trying to do their best within a flawed legal system. This somewhat farfetched story line manages to keep us on pins and needles throughout most of the film.

It's about what you would expect...
2009-12-13 - I liked this movie, I found it entertaining. But it's about what you would expect from the trailer. An "average Joe" goes vigilante on the justice system after his wife and daughter are murdered and the killer gets a light prison sentence. Oh, and he takes out the killer in gruesome fashion as well. It turns out, however, that our "average Joe" is a little more than average in the wits department. But he's no match for Philly's finest DA! Some cool death scenes (Judge you wanna go ahead and get that phone call on your own time) and a clever ending.

Final Grade: B-

Surprisingly Good
2009-12-08 - This movie seemed really good from the commercials. It should have had a bigger buzz. It definately did not dissapoint. Two guys rape and murder Gerard Butler's wife and daughter. Jamie Foxx delivers a nice peformance as a district attorney that makes a plea deal with one of the murderers just because he's scared to loose at trial. 10 years later Butler's character decides to get his own justice against everyone involved in his families murder. This once normal guy goes on an all out killing spree. The fact that he's some kind of genious probably helps. I really liked this movie. However, I could only give it three stars because it was not very creative. We've seen these types of movies a million times over. It's the same great story with different actors. It's still a very good movie though. These A-list actors really deliver. People have really slept on this movie. I guess after The Soloist people are not banking on Jamie Foxx anymore. He just bounced back with this one. Rent this one and buy it when it comes out on dvd. I give it a definate two thumbs up. Holla!

Poor
2009-12-03 - The movie is disappointing. Everywhere in the world there is a miscarriage of justice - no matter what system is used. I'm 100% for making sure the 100% guilty get a fair punishment - by any means.

1.5 stars. Laughable insult to intelligence with one of the worst endings ever.
2009-11-17 - I'm sure we've all experienced many movies where we said to ourselves, "Well, I'll just turn my brain off, sit back and enjoy the thrills (or chills, or silliness)." Heck, a great thing about a lot of movies is being ABLE to do that and just have a childlike good time. There are many mentally undemanding movies that delight: THE HANGOVER is the most recent example that springs immediately to my mind. It stretches credibility, yet is generally so well cast and constructed, and so genial in its carrying on that only a real Scrooge wouldn't crack a smile. I would also say that CRANK 2, a truly jaw-droppingly unrealistic movie actually works in its quite twisted way because it clearly knows that it has gone way to far in terms of physical believability or even good taste. (SHOOT `EM UP is an even better example.) These kinds of films are sometimes guilty pleasures...but they often are the movies that come down from the video shelf over and over again. I've watched SUPERBAD a few more times than CITIZEN KANE. Is it a better movie? Hardly! Is it more entertaining? Yep! And it has heart, too.

Then there is LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, a movie that wants to be serious, intelligent, "adult" action thriller with a moral message. In reality, it is a piece of trash that needed to embrace its real self. Thus, it mostly fails as either kind of movie.

The film opens with us meeting handsome but homespun Gerard Butler as he shares tender moments with his young daughter and lovely wife. He is an inventor or engineer of some sort, but mostly seems to be a nice guy that you'd expect is nice to his neighbors, goes to church, wears sweaters and is devoted to his family. A GOOD guy. Yet in mere moments, he suffers a home invasion that leaves him without a family. His family is killed before his eyes in a manner that is so uncomfortable to watch that we frankly never quite shake the squalor. I realize there's nothing "entertaining" about a family being killed, but direct F. Gary Gray goes a bit too far. He doesn't just generate righteous outrage in us, but an uncomfortable feeling of "this movie has gone too far for a piece of fluff."

The bad guys are caught, and prosecutor Jamie Foxx steps in. A driven man with an eye on his next promotion (has there ever been a movie ADA that isn't ambitious and driven to replace his boss?), Foxx eventually plea bargains with the bad guys, much to the unbelieving anger of Butler (understandably).

Years pass, and one of the bad guys gets out of jail. He is almost immediately kidnapped, tortured and killed by Butler (again, in a manner that borders on films more like SAW and HOSTEL). And Butler is almost immediately caught an imprisoned. But now he's not such a teddy bear. He's a ruthless killer of his own, who apparently has figured out a way to carry out a rather complex revenge scheme, even while in prison. Foxx must figure out what's going on before Butler has killed his entire team, because he blames the system as much as he blames the killers.

The film contains lots of scenes of verbal cat-and-mouse between Butler and Foxx, and the two do bring a lot of charisma to their scenes together. But the script isn't particularly intelligent (although the way the film is directed...and filmed, with lots of gray tones), clearly the creators thought it was smart and taut.

But the killings become more and more elaborate and rococo. Butler resembles little more than a more handsome and healthy SAW killer...able to spin elaborate murders that are also neat little moral lessons.

We're clearly meant to agonize over what Butler is doing. The system certainly wronged him...coupling that wrong with what he endured, along with a brilliant engineer's mind, and you apparently have the recipe for a diabolical (but righteous) serial killer. Foxx mostly glowers and looks angry, and other than a few bursts in his encounters with Butler, his performance is one-note and not very interesting. NOTHING of his natural charm comes through...he's created a workaholic tighta** who is also a humorless party-pooper. So it's actually easier to root for Butler than for him (although Butler's performance is one-note as well...he at least has some manic, if unspecific, energy).

But while 85% of the movie is a fairly uninspired thriller with a few explosions and some gruesome killings...we ARE left to wonder: how is Butler doing all this from jail? Does he have help from the outside? And then, wonder of wonders, the truth is revealed and the movie goes from being just barely okay to jaw-droppingly laughable. It's a "surprise" twist that should win awards of audacity (and also for implausibility). I had to laugh outloud, then I stopped to assure myself the movie was REALLY doing what I thought it was, and when I ascertained that it indeed WAS...I laughed some more.

How anyone made the final few scenes with a straight face is beyond me. Had the movie been made with a tone that was more "nudge-nudge" than deadly serious, it might have come across as just another crazy twist in a wacky revenge fantasia. Instead, it was the final nail in the coffin of self-seriousness that this film should be buried in.

I can find very little to reason for you to endure this film. I've done it for you, and you should thank me for the warning!!