Law Abiding Citizen

Gerard Butler plays a vigilante avenging his wife and daughter's deaths 2 Reviews

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If you can buy 300 star Gerard Butler as a vigilante with a penchant for quoting Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, this knee-jerk vengeance thriller may spark your synapses. Ten years after witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and daughter, Clyde Shelton (Butler) repays the two killers responsible: one dies screaming after Clyde rigs the lethal injection, the other meets a torturous end that is videotaped and sent to Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), an ambitious assistant DA who, a decade before, negotiated an expedient plea bargain for the second killer. But when Clyde is arrested, he declares war on the city of Philadelphia and its political and legal institutions.

Director Gray’s remake of The Italian Job was a solid effort, as was writer Kurt Wimmer’s reworking of The Thomas Crown Affair. Sadly, there’s nothing here but bloody offcuts from Death Wish, Saw and The Silence of the Lambs, in roughly that order.

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