Law Abiding Citizen liveblog

"(I)f trying to be intense and serious and succeeding only in looking completely goddamn ridiculous were an Olympic sport, Law Abiding Citizen would have been crowned its Michael Phelps based solely on the two-and-a-half minute span presented above." Me, after seeing the trailer for Law Abiding Citizen back in August of last year.

Join me to find out how far Gerard Butler will go to avenge his murdered family after being failed by the justice system. My guess: further than Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence, but not as far as Charles Bronson in Death Wish.

0:00: I have a question: how come the main takeaway from the success of 300 was "Gerard Butler should be a major mainstream movie star"? I haven't made a habit of seeing any of his movies since then - maybe I'm missing out, and The Ugly Truth is actually a new-era The Philadelphia Story - but he strikes me as a puffier Russell Crowe with the fratboy aloofness of Vince Vaughn. Now that I think about it, I guess I can see why a casting director would go for something like that. Though I wonder how he's going to fare in the Sam Worthington era.

0:00: Fun fact: Law Abiding Citizen was written by Kurt Wimmer, the writer/director of the underrated Equilibrium, which achieved a kind of greatness due to featuring some seriously inventive action sequences and Christian Bale in full-on overachiever mode. I don't know if the writing really distinguished itself in that one, though.

1:34: Gerard Butler gets hit in the face with a baseball bat by some robbers after a whopping 42 seconds of character establishment (summary: he has a cute family). The robbers rape his wife and kill his kid, but don't appear to actually steal anything except for a trophy from the mantelplace, presumably awarded to Gerard Butler for Family Least Likely To Be Killed.

3:35: Now we open on ambitious young prosecutor Jamie Foxx, being ambitious and young. He decides that he can't take the risk of prosecuting both the robbers, so he makes a deal to send one of them to Death Row while convicting the other one on a lesser charge. "This is just how the justice system works!" Gerard Butler is sad.

9:12: Now the deal is closed, and of course the more evil robber is the one that has the lighter sentence. The more evil robber shakes Jamie Foxx's hand and says "It's nice when the system works" in an evil voice. Oh, the irony! Gerard Butler looks on with a look of slight annoyance.

11:34: Now Jamie Foxx is talking to his pregnant wife's belly.

11:55: TEN YEARS LATER - this movie really doesn't waste a lot of time on exposition. Now Jamie Foxx is a slightly older but still ambitious prosecutor. His wife is bitching at him about never making it to their kid's piano recitals because he's so invested in his work.

14:00: It turns out that he's going to the execution of the less-evil robber that was sentenced to death, because he totally has to be there and couldn't possibly miss that to see his daughter play in a recital. There's some classy intercutting between the recital and the execution that probably should have been a match on action, but isn't.

14:15: This movie's commitment to not trying to make its actors look 10 years older despite having flashed forward ten years is truly impressive.

16:15: The execution goes bad! It's supposed to be a basic painless lethal injection, but instead it causes the less evil robber's heart to explode! Jamie Foxx is not happy and wants answers.

20:34: Now the more evil robber is running from the cops because they want to question him. But Gerard Butler calls him on his cellphone using the voice masking deal from Scream and guides him to safety. Then he pretends to be a cop using a wig and fake mustache and lets himself be captured by the more evil robber, only it's really a setup so Gerard Butler can turn the tables on him by letting the robber steal a fake gun that has spikes that come out of the grip.

22:00: The more evil robber is paralyzed with "toxin from a Caribbean puffer fish" that immobilizes him but still lets him feel pain. Gerard Butler does some Saw type torture stuff and cuts the more evil robber up into pieces.

24:19: The prosecutor team is now trying to figure out who could have messed with the lethal injection device. This is not what the intro to Law & Order (RIP) let me to believe prosecutors do. They find out that the more evil robber has been chopped up in a warehouse owned by Gerard Butler. We also learn that Gerard Butler is a "tinkerer" who holds "19 patents" which I think is shorthand for "super-genius." 

29:15: Now they're off to arrest Gerard Butler, who takes his shirt off before the cops get there for some reason. He's wearing the bracelet his daughter gave him in the first 30 seconds of the movie. The prosecutors are helping to search the crime scene, because there are no other crimes in the city of Philadelphia that need their attention.

31:20: "We have zero evidence. We're going to need a confession!" Isn't the clear motive and the fact that the murder was committed on his property enough to make a case?

32:10: Jamie Foxx's daughter gets a DVD that she thinks is of her recital but is actually of Gerard Butler carving up the more evil robber.

33:30: Jamie Foxx is now interrogating Gerard Butler in the middle of a comically overlarge cell that looks like something from the third act of The Silence of the Lambs.


34:20: "You might want to cancel your 12:30 lunch with Judge Roberts." Gerard Butler really is a super-genius! He must have hacked into Jamie Foxx's Outlook calendar.

36:15: "You've got me confused, I don't deal with prison stuff." - Jamie Foxx, who based on what we've seen so far does pretty much everything except prosecute criminals, including probably planning the meals in the prison cafeteria.

38:15: Now they're trying to trace Gerard Butler's holdings, which are registered through a Panamanian dummy corporation.You can tell the movie is trying to make a half-assed nod to real police work here, while hoping that the viewer doesn't know what prosecutors actually do.


40:35: This movie is kind of a rip-off of the little remembered Anthony Hopkins-Ryan Gosling movie Fracture, which was itself kind of a rip-off of Primal Fear.

41:00: We see Jamie Foxx doing some actual prosecuting! More specifically, requesting that Gerard Butler not be granted bail. Gerard Butler gives a speech in his defense, which uses the words "law abiding citizen," and cites precedent. The judge is impressed and looks ready to grant him bail. Then he gives another speech about how the justice system is too lenient and says to the judge "I feed you a couple precedents and you jump on them like a bitch in heat!"

41:33: Gerard Butler is right about the American justice system. If this were say, good old Soviet Russia, criminals would be shot in the back of the head immediately after a show trial and a bill for the bullet would be sent to their surviving family. The way it's supposed to be!

48:13: Now Gerard Butler blackmails Jamie Foxx into buying him a steak lunch because he kidnapped the more evil robber's attorney and buried him alive with a bunch of oxygen tanks. They don't get to save the attorney because Gerard Butler didn't get his lunch exactly on time. Meanwhile, Gerard Butler kills his cellmate with the bone from his steak.

58:15: Jamie Foxx visits Gerard Butler in solitary confinement and gives him back the bracelet that his daughter made him. So far, there are shockingly few correctional officers in this prison.

59:20: Now some government agent guy is revealing that Gerard Butler is a super-smart brainy government operative who can plan anything. Actual dialogue: "Just assume this guy can hear and see everything you're doing. Every move he makes, it means something." I can't help but think this dialogue wouldn't be necessary to establish the character if Gerard Butler were a better actor.

1:00:34: Now Jamie Foxx is talking to the judge, who's going to let them keep Gerard Butler in solitary confinement even though it's against his constitutional rights (but not really, because he has committed a murder THE DAY BEFORE). Then the judge's cell phone rings and she picks it up and then the phone shoots her in the head, because that can happen.

1:03:41: More ranting from Gerard Butler about how the justice system doesn't work and he's going to bring it down with his terrorist campaign. I wonder if Nancy Grace did an uncredited punch-up on this script?

1:05:15: "Release me before 6 AM and drop all charges." "Or what?" "Or I kill... everyone!"

1:06:00: Now they're talking about Panamanian treaty law. Those corporate accounts are the real key to solving this murder case!

1:08:44: It's 6 AM - what's going to happen?

1:09:47: Gerard Butler kills Jamie Foxx' attractive deputy DA with a carbomb! He also planted two or three other carbombs that go off without killing anybody, because explosions are cool.


1:12:15: More actual dialogue, from a new character who appears to be a boss of some sort: "Let me get this straight. Not only do we know who did it, we have him locked up and he's still killing people? You boys sure fucked this one up. The press is going to kill us!" I like how in the world of Law Abiding Citizen the justice system is horribly inept at locking people up and the press is apparently voracious in speaking truth to power. That's cutting-edge social realism.

1:14:35: Now Jamie Foxx is beating up Gerard Butler and Gerard Butler is taunting him by saying that he's planning "von Clausewitz shit, total fucking war." How philosophical!

1:16:20: Older, wiser prosecutor at cute junior DA's funeral: "Did we bring this all on ourselves?" Cursed by their own hubris!

1:18:14: Now the prosecutors are leaving the funeral and they get ambushed by what appears to be a 50 caliber machine gun and rocket launcher mounted on the Mars Rover, controlled by an unseen figure with gloved hands. The older, wise prosecutor gets blown up.

1:20:52: Now, the person who was yelling at Jamie Foxx two scenes ago, who is apparently the mayor, is promoting him to head DA. Then she gives a briefing to Jamie Foxx and a couple other people about how the city of Philadelphia is too scared to go outside because of the killings

1:23:38: Back to the tax records, which is turning out to be the retarded sister of this movie's subplots. Jamie Foxx has a breakthrough and finds a property that Gerard Butler bought through his dummy corporation. He and the asshole DEA agent from Con Air break in while making more disparaging comments about civil rights. They find a big mining tunnel hidden under a car that leads into the prison that Gerard Butler is in, complete with an underground armory and a bunch of disguises. In an unbelievably half-assed attempt to make this movie look smarter than it clearly is, there's also a plaque with a quote from von Clausewitz that looks like it was produced by the custom sign department at a Staples.

1:28:10: "He tunneled into every cell!" Yes, this is actually what happens.

1:29:04: Now Gerard Butler is at City Hall disguised as a cleaning person, because apparently he's been operating a cleaning service for several years in anticipation of this plot. Jamie Foxx and the asshole DEA agent from Con Air run over to City Hall without calling for backup, probably because they're prosecutors, not law enforcement, and therefore aren't allowed to call for backup.

1:33:42: They find a bomb Gerard Butler left, but Jamie Foxx decides not to evacuate the building, becuase obviously that's what Gerard Butler would want them to do. Gerard Butler goes back to prison and watches the mayor's meeting on a device that looks like a mix between a portable TV and a piece of gym equipment.

1:36:09: Jamie Foxx is waiting in Gerard Butler's cell when he gets back. They have their fifth conversation about how Gerard Butler is betraying the memory of his family by killing everyone and Jamie Foxx tried to talk Gerard Butler out of blowing up City Hall because it will make him feel bad. Gerard Butler hits the detonator anyway.

1:39:15: Jamie Foxx moved the bomb to underneath the bed in Gerard Butler's cell! Gerard Butler blows up in a slow motion shot while looking at the bracelet his daughter made for him. Also the bomb appears to take out a good chunk of the prison wall, which you would think Jamie Foxx would have taken into account when formulating this plan.

1:41:18: And now Jamie Foxx finally makes it to one of his daughter's music recitals, having learned a valuable lesson about fatherhood in one of the scenes we must not have seen. End of movie!

Bonus: There's a special feature on the DVD called "The Justice of Law Abiding Citizen" The self-aggrandizing special features attached to crappy movies are often times even more entertaining than the movies themselves, as they give the filmmakers a chance to engage in wild hyperbole about thematic elements that are either barely present or poorly handled in the finished product. The interview with Dan Brown on the DVD for The DaVinci Code is a bona-fide classic of this type.


From Law Abiding Citizen director F. Gary Gray: "The best thing about this concept is that it doesn't fit into the normal Hollywood formula." Exactly! There are formula movies about people taking violent revenge for the murders of their families, and there are formula movies about Machiavellian geniuses implementing ridiculously complex criminal plots while under the direct surveillance of authorities, but only Law Abiding Citizen has the iconoclastic spirit to adopt every single element of both of those types of movies and knit them together in a semi-coherent fashion. Also, whoever produced this special feature had the sheer balls to run that quote over a clip from the movie featuring a huge explosion.

From producer Lucas Foster: "Every scene is about 'are we really receiving justice or not in the modern age?' And I don't know if we are." I think that Lucas Foster is right, and I predict that one day, not too far from now, Law Abiding Citizen will be on the curriculum for Ethics courses in some of our nation's most forward thinking community colleges.

Also from Lucas Foster: "We think of the justice system as something where, when someone is arrested, and they're put into the system, that's more or less the end of it." Um, we do? Even someone who's knowledge of the legal system is based entirely on TV dramas has a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the justice system than this.

There's actually a former prosecutor explaining how when a felony murder is committed, everyone involved is considered culpable. She also says that Jamie Foxx in the movie would have a tough time trying the case of Gerard Butler's family's murder because it's based in eyewitness testimony. Then another former prosecutor says "eyewitness testimony can hold up, and frequently does, but there are no guarantees."

There's also a special feature about the visual effects of the movie, one of which is about how they added snow in one scene for a "visual, ethereal vibe." Other than that, it's the typical boring special feature where the producer brag about how much of their movie is unnecessarily produced inside of a computer.