Review: Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen. 108 minutes. Rated MA15+. Directed by F. Gary Gray; Written by Kurt Wimmer.

If you're still sitting in the cinema at the conclusion of the first five minutes of this nasty, pretentious little offering, you'll only have yourself to blame. The opening sequence ends with one of the most grotesque lines of dialogue ever uttered by an actor on film in any circumstance, and I battled the immediate instinct to walk out simply because I had to stay so I could tell you all about it. And, perhaps even more astonishingly, it all goes rapidly downhill from there.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnesses the brutal assault (and later, we learn, murder) of his wife and young daughter by two home invaders. When super-lawyer, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), cuts a deal with one of the perpetrators in order to secure the death penalty for the other, Shelton decides to take matters into his own hands. Yes, 'yawn'.

Law Abiding Citizen is an unapologetic mess of a film that tries too hard to mean (and achieve) anything and ends up meaning (and achieving) nothing – all underpinned by Brian Tyler's instantly forgettable score. Mr Gray mistakes film directing for pointing the camera at the actors (when it's not floating around the air for no particular reason), and Jonathan Sela's bland, artless Cinematography mistakes grey for emotion, which only serves to contribute to the visual blandness of this perverse, cinematic-flatline of a film.

Mr Foxx acts throughout the entire thing as though he is hoping that it's all going to end much sooner than it is (and that his pay cheque won't bounce), and the charisma-less Mr Butler (who also shares an additional guilt burden as one of the Producers) delivers one of the most tediously self-indulgent performances in recent memory. Only Leslie Bibb (as Rice's assistant Sarah Lowell) manages to redeem herself with a beautifully machiavellian performance of innocence and great integrity as she begins to question the extent to which everyone else is enamoured with with their own 'star power' (not only as far as what passes for a 'plot' is concerned, but also, I suspect, in the 'acting' stakes).

How Law Abiding Citizen ever got a theatrical release (instead of going straight to DVD for people who have 108 minutes of their lives to spare), remains an unqualifiable mystery. Most unusually, every single member of the audience at the screening I attended fled the cinema the second it was over. If revenge thrillers are your thing, then rent the vastly superior Die Hard 1, 2, 3 or 4 instead.

This review was commissioned by The Geraldton Guardian and published in the print edition.