Australian Penthouse

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Director:  F. Gary Gray
Stars:  Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney
Roadshow

Review:  Suzan Ryan

IT could have been so good.  The premise is exciting: family man and electronics whiz Clyde Shelton (Butler) is forced to watch his family murdered during a home invasion.  The devastated father looks for justice in the US courts, only to discover that one of the killers has made a deal with prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx) to send the other guy to the chair while he gets three years.  The attorneys call it a victory, but to Shelton, it’s an abomination.

Shelton takes matters into his own hands, and after a clever and shocking series of revenge murders, he is jailed, but still the killings continue.  Rice and DA Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill) must stop Shelton from striking again, but first they have to discover how he is doing it from his maximum-security cell.

What begins as a fresh look at the fall of the American empire from its corrupt core of misplaced values—with an Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) inspired feel to the script, in pace and suspense—degrades into an ‘America is always right’ mawkish family-values drama that’s an insincere and as rotten as the killers.

By mid-point  you may find yourself wanting Rice and Jonas to get whacked; their vapid and ignorant posturing is nauseating, and a single-faceted performance by Foxx overshadows an understated turn by Butler, effecting bitter disappointment after such a promising start.