Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx in the film, Law Abiding Citizen _460
Law Abiding Citizen (Cert 18, 109 mins)
Stars: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin
Directed by F Gary Gray
Rating: 2/5
JUSTICE is blind – and, by the end of F Gary Gray’s gruesome thriller – it’s also horribly burned, dismembered and disembowelled as a man turns the tables on the lawmakers who let him down, with the help of his good friend Semtex.
The moral conundrum that underpins Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay is constantly obscured by graphic violence and relentlessly sadistic revenge fantasies played out by the central character.
His corruption at the hands of an unfair justice system and subsequent quest for retribution are supposed to blur the lines between good and evil, but the protagonists aren’t sketched in sufficient detail to carry the story’s flimsy convictions.
Gerard Butler has evidently been freeze-framing The Silence Of The Lambs as inspiration for his performance as the family man turned vigilante.
He chews lifelessly on every clichéd line, while Jamie Foxx, as the man of the law who must stop him, is just plain lifeless.
