After hearing about this from a teammate, a friend and a coworker (not all the same person),I decided to watch it.

This is a tale of revenge. A middle aged man by the name of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnesses his wife and daughter get brutally murdered at the hand of two criminals. This atrocity happens very early in the movie and sets the tone. Asst. DA, soon to be DA, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx),tries the case and doesn't secure a verdict satisfactory to Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler). That leaves Clyde to take matters into his own hands.

The movie was quite inventive and clever, even if Clyde was mad with vengeance. You couldn't help but root for Clyde to some degree as he wrought death and havoc upon those responsible for his family's killer's light sentence. He started his warpath with the most responsible parties, i.e. the criminals, then he extended out from there. Each move made tactical sense until towards the end. I ask you: after the two scumbag criminals, their lawyer and the judge... who is the MOST liable for the lack of justice? Obviously it would be Nick Rice!! So why then wasn't he immediately targeted?

At first I was thinking that Clyde had something more in store for Nick. I was thinking: he's going to destroy his life. Get him fired, make him lose his family and then land him in prison somehow. But, as the movie went on, Clyde was targeting everyone BUT Nick. It really didn't make any sense. Then the ending plain sucked. The dialog between Clyde and Nick was too cheesy; in fact, this was not a good Jamie Foxx performance. It was obvious that he was trying to play the cocky DA but he mailed in the performance. Back to the ending... it was not well thought out. Sure, they brought the bomb back to his cell to make him do himself in, but that was so absurd. Let's see: 1.) transporting armed napalm 2.) have no idea when he'll detonate it 3.) got it back to his cell (of course through the secret entrance) 4.) stayed in the cell until he was ready to detonate it 5.) escaped before being blown up too.

A better ending: A.) Nick Price straight up kills Clyde or B.) Clyde kills Nick Price as the final sacrifice and either gets away or gets caught and takes his death penalty having gotten the vengeance he sought. I assume this was supposed to be a happy ending because the good guy gone bad was killed, but I couldn't help but feel that the ending was incomplete. At the very least the ending was ambivalent; no way to say that good triumphed over evil.

I never rooted for Jamie Fox's character, I wanted Butler to kill everyone. The director failed to make me see Butler as a villain. If that was the intention, it didn't mesh. Fun movie though.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN has all the trademarks of a great film. A non-linear plot, plenty to say about the state of the world today, some tough performances and explosive sequences. Best of all, it blurs the line between good and evil so that you're never quite sure who you're supposed to root for, which guy's the villain and which guy's the hero.

Gerard Butler stars as the ordinary man whose family is killed in a burglary gone wrong. Butler then undergoes a startling transformation as he sets up a campaign of revenge against all those who failed to bring the killers to justice. The film goes from there, starting off dark and becoming increasingly more bleak as the running time goes on.

It has plenty of incident to keep it running along, and some great scenes: Butler's manipulation of the prison regulations, for instance, or the way he manages to wage his vendetta from the INTERIOR of his prison cell. But, along the way, the film's sense of realism diminishes until we end up with a completely ludicrous event at the end which is designed to bring closure. It's not on par with, say, EAGLE EYE for suspension of disbelief, but it's getting there. It's just a shame, as with some tighter writing this could have been a truly great movie. It turns out to be an intriguing oddity, instead.

Butler is good as the 'bad guy', effectively channelling some of that Leonidas rage. But, as usual, Jamie Foxx is completely out of his depth as the lawyer. He's a vacuum of talent, an empty space in the middle of the movie surrounded by other, better, more seasoned performers. It's a shame, as the combination of rubbish actor and rubbish ending scupper this movie's best intentions.