User Reviews

After hearing about this from a teammate, a friend, and a coworker (not all the same person), I decided to watch it.

This is a tale of revenge. A middle aged man by the name of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnesses his wife and daughter get brutally murdered at the hands of two criminals. This atrocity happens very early in the movie and sets the tone. Asst. DA, soon to be DA, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), tries the case and doesn't secure a verdict satisfactory to Clyde. That leads him to take matters into his own hands.

The movie was quite inventive and clever, even if Clyde was mad with vengeance. You couldn't help but root for Clyde to some degree as he wrought death and havoc upon those responsible for his family's killer's light sentence. He started his warpath with the most responsible parties, i.e. The criminals, then he extended out from there. Each move made tactical sense until towards the end. I ask you: after the two scumbag criminals, their lawyer and the judge... who is the MOST liable for the lack of justice? Obviously it would be Nick Rice, the prosecutor who consented to the light sentence. So why then wasn't he immediately targeted?

At first I was thinking that Clyde had something more in store for Nick. I was thinking: he's going to destroy his life. Get him fired, make him lose his family and then land him in prison somehow. But, as the movie went on, Clyde was targeting everyone BUT Nick. It really didn't make any sense. Then the ending plain sucked. The dialog between Clyde and Nick was too cheesy; in fact, this was not a good Jamie Foxx performance. It was obvious that he was trying to play the cocky DA but he mailed in the performance.

Back to the ending... it was not well thought out.

Nick and co. Discovered Clyde's bomb and they brought the bomb back to Clyde's cell to make him do himself in, but that was beyond absurd!!

Let's see: 1.) transporting armed napalm 2.) having no idea when he'll detonate it 3.) getting it back to his cell (of course through the secret entrance) 4.) staying in the cell until he was ready to detonate it 5.) escaping before being blown up too.

Who came up with this!?

I have a better ending: A.) Nick Price straight up kills Clyde or B.) Clyde kills Nick Price as the final sacrifice and either gets away or gets caught and takes his death penalty having gotten the vengeance he sought. I assume this was supposed to be a happy ending because the good guy gone bad was killed, but I couldn't help but feel that the ending was incomplete. At the very least the ending was ambivalent; no way to say that good triumphed over evil. Nick essentially did Clyde a disservice, shrugged it off, and then got to play hero in the end by killing Clyde.

I demand a rewrite.

The movie was not unlike other movies where you see the good guy go rogue after rough handling by "the system". But I really liked the development of the characters in the beginning, and I am sure I am not the only one out there hoping that the "Law Abiding Citizen" would be able to pull it off.

Then came the middle where plot points become strained, where we have to take a few leaps of faith and leave the world of genius for one of Hollywood. OK, I'm still there, taking the ride with you.

But then we get to the ending which destroys the film and makes it into brain pablum; mental oatmeal that anyone can digest but no one can get any flavor from. Mr. Genius buys several industrial areas -- but why? Only 2 seemed to be necessary for the plot. And why would Panama know the purchase prices? And down to the cent! Corporations don't need to share that information with foreign governments. Nix that link and this movie would have been more interesting. We're expected to believe a genius would leave the cleaning cart in obvious view in the hallway and right next to the area where he put the bomb? We're expected to believe the genius wouldn't have trapped his escape route. And we're expected to believe they transferred this bomb from Point A to Point B without setting it off and in record time, all while Foxx waits in the cell, and Scotty Junior brings up the rear, unseen and unheard.

I wanted Foxx's arrogant character to lose his daughter, to feel what this man went through, and then I wanted him to get away with it.

Anyone agree?

In Philadelphia, the family man Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is violently attacked at home by two punks and his wife and daughter are rapped and murdered by Clarence Darby (Christian Stolte). The two criminals are arrested by the police but the ambitious D.A. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal with the assassin Darby that accuses his partner to keep his average of convictions in court despite the protest of Clyde. Ten years later, Darby's partner is executed by lethal injection but the defective machine makes him suffer lots of pain. Meanwhile Clyde abducts Darby and executes him in a sadistic way. Clyde is arrested without evidences and Nick negotiates his confession. Sooner Nick discovers that the purpose of Clyde is not only vengeance, but to destroy the corrupt justice system and the head of the city that released the assassin of his family.

Since I saw the trailer of "Law Abiding Citizen", I have been anxious to see this film. Last week, it was released on DVD in Brazil by Swen Filmes and after watching it, unfortunately I found it a blockbuster movie with a promising beginning and a disappointing conclusion. The plot works well showing the deception of an apparently common citizen with the way the corrupt justice system works. Then there is the first inconsistency: why should a man with his background wait for ten years to catch a criminal that had been released seven years ago? Why should he be in jail to destroy the justice system and the City Hall? Last but not the least, why didn't he kill the wife and daughter of Nick Rice to make him feel the same sort of pain and grief that he had been submitted with his decision? That would be the most appropriate revenge for an intelligent man after killing the murderers of his family, but probably the producers were more interested in the box office than in a reasonably more believable non-commercial plot. Only people that do not think might find this movie amazing as I glanced in some reviews. The exaggeration and accuracy of his plans are also annoying and absolutely unbelievable, and the arrogant character performed by Jamie Foxx is despicable to win in the end. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Código de Conduta" ("Code of Conduct")

This is a great idea. A technical genius who is somehow able to commit revenge murders from his jail cell. He doesn't hide the fact he's a killer; in fact he announces each murder just before it happens.

Technically everything was possible and the method very cleverly hidden so I was kept in suspense until the last 20 minutes when the cat was let out of the bag too early. The ending is a let down. It's true Hollywood: Technically improbable, illogical, and in my opinion it spoils all the character development made until that point and wastes the opportunity for a much darker ending with a more satisfying outcome.

All that said I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone not disturbed by moderate violence. Go see it!

Just watched LAW ABIDING CITIZEN. I don't know why i still bother watching American movies. It's a decade-long Hollywood tradition to screw up good ideas by illogical plots and happy endings. The WHOLE point of the movie, bringing DOWN the legal system could only be proved if Shelton was to walk free after all he did. To show that the legal system was unable to hinder him murdering people though being in custody AND had to set him free, because the DA and the judge broke the law to stop his series of murder thus ignoring his civil rights which would ultimately lead to dismissing all charges. The supposed plot to blow up the mayor and homeland security does not at all fit neither the character of Shelton nor the plot of the movie. Good movie screwed up completely in the last 15 minutes. Hollywoods Epitaph.

Come on Hollywood, this guy was so clever, tactful & brilliant & yet you expect the audience to believer that he wouldn't even have a bloody security system installed on the very building, which was the only means of exit & entry to his prison cell... never mind that the building housed nerve & command center, from which he executed his flavour of justice!

Here's another plot hole of gargantuan proportion(s); how in the heck did Fox get the briefcase/bomb back to the jail cell BEFORE Butler returned? Oh yeah & WHY would Fox willfully allow Butler to detonate the bomb, even though he had discovered the means, by which he was perpetrating his reign of terror?!? That would be the epitome of anti-justice- especially considering he was the acting D.A.! Why didn't they show him being charged & prosecuted for murder?!?

This is a case whereby you actually wanted the bad guy to get the last word in on the matter!!! But no... Jamie Fox had to come out on top! Actually, I think Fox would/should have been the FIRST person on Butler's list! WHY couldn't Hollywood just grant this movie the ending it righteously deserved?!? It was going sooo well! Whoever is in charge of the ending to this film ought to have been on Butler's list!

Look at it this way, what if in 300 King Leonidas in the last scene jumped out, tripped, and fell on his spear? That is what happens in this one.

A really good thriller but fails in the end when the super smart bad guy (Butler) does some very out of character things. It had a great all but the last 5 to 10 minuets. Then in the last few scenes, he misses key details and uses a conventional way to try to kill off city hall. What happened to the uber tech that Clyde was building? What happened to the Hans Gruber'esk bad guy genius? Sorry... fail!

After sitting through a really good first 90 minuets of Butler outsmarting and out playing the semi-crooked ADA (Fox), Butler suddenly and inexplicably resorts to a suitcase bomb full of eventually gasoline to try to blow up city hall. Also, again after time and again being one or even ten steps ahead, Butler then completely misses that cops etc have been in his lair and moved all kinds of item around. This would be like Batman not knowing someone had been in the Bat Cave, and the film failed at that point. For me, it lost something when the super smart lost out by becoming common in the last scene of the last act.

"Just as every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints. As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer / 'Cause I'm in need of some restraint..." --Sympathy For The Devil, The Rolling Stones.

Handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser, I see a poster for LAW ABIDING CITIZEN and overhear the officer in the driver seat comment to his partner, "Seen that movie? Awesome."

Of course he'd think it was awesome. We all know that cops are bottom-rungers, trained watchdogs, the lowest cog apprehenders of the lowest cogs. They only know enough about "The Law" to apprehend without discernment. And they know nothing about "Justice." Now I could've tried to dissuade this bacon burger of his ignorant opinion, but a) I was busy exercising my right to remain silent, and b) he would not possess the mental capacity to comprehend me; which might have led to c) a nightstick to the throat.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is about a vigilante, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), who takes revenge on the men who murdered his wife and child. Clyde is apprehended by the police (see? "apprehend without discernment") and from his jail cell he terrorizes lazy, despicable attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) to teach him a lesson. Nick let the murderers walk on a plea bargain, instead of taking it to trial and risking losing a case.

CITIZEN starts as a very satisfactory, righteous vigilante story and an indictment against the criminal "justice" system, and turns into a one-dimensional vendetta that involves Clyde blowing stuff up, Hollywood style.

The movie's first half is a rollout of counterintuitive surprises: Clyde carving up his wife's murderer and then letting himself be taken in - naked, mind you, ladies! (that's some Sparta-licious booty!); Clyde citing an obscure case number at his hearing and the judge allowing him to walk - then chiding the judge for almost letting a suspected murderer go free and being taken into custody for contempt!; Clyde blackmailing Nick into getting him a Duxiana mattress and a steak dinner in jail.

When Clyde kills his cellmate unemotionally and lies back waiting for the warden peacefully, we realize something is going askew - it's a cool scene, but Clyde is starting to look like Hannibal Lecter, rather than a man bent on revenge for his wife. It astounds me how writer Kurt Wimmer and director F. Gary Gray lost the movie's message so inelegantly.

To stop Clyde blowing stuff up and teaching him lessons, Nick Rice decides to go vigilante and blow up Clyde, Hollywood style. Which means he learned NOTHING from Clyde. Taking the law into your own hands is EXACTLY what Nick was trying to stop Clyde from doing. Further, Nick had no proof that Clyde was perpetrating all the vengeful acts - you might "know" a person has committed crimes but before you BLOW THEM UP, shouldn't you take them to trial first, or at least read them their rights?

But that cop said this movie was "awesome." Getting an idea of the shallow mindset of uniformed flatfoots?

It gets tiresome when we can figure the "winner" of the movie by figuring the biggest paycheck. Butler may have carved his name into the A-List with 300, but Foxx (RAY, DREAMGIRLS, THE SOLOIST) is the money here.

Clyde states unequivocally, "everyone must be held accountable for their actions," yet Nick is never brought to justice himself when HE goes vigilante without evidence. I've said it before: Vigilantism is as malformed and unjust as The Law that it thumbs its nose at. Two sides of the same confused coin. This movie chooses to ignore any further consequences of vigilantism or the law or justice after the moneyboy gets his way.

In the DVD Commentary, the filmmakers say Nick Rice is interested in Justice as a concept - but they've got it wrong. He's interested in The Law as a Job. Clyde laments he is a law abiding citizen, thus the law should deliver him justice. So we take it for granted the title pertains to him. But the unrealized irony in this movie is that detective Nick Rice is playing the LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - the one who suckles at the black teat of The Law for his advancement - and Clyde Shelton is the Justice-seeking citizen.

So explain the Justice of why I'm in the back of this police car? Geez, look who I'm asking...

Until last 15 minutes I was thinking that iam watching a awesome movie. DA is guilty to the most than others in this movie because he cares about is his win percentage but not justice,movie ends with making him a winner.

The movie starts losing credibility right about the time Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) turns into a killing machine. It doesn't help, once he's incarcerated, that he manages to pull off the deaths of six Department of Justice employees, including lawyer Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb) working for the prosecution. Not quite the way one would go about garnering sympathy for the murder of his own wife and daughter. This was almost going to be one of those films in which the viewer becomes conflicted over the inadequacies of the justice system, but it becomes pretty clear that there's no one to root for here. Not even attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), who's own frustration in dealing with Shelton turns him into an automoton seeking revenge instead of justice. Funny how a film titled "Law Abiding Citizen" turns out not to have any.

"Law Abiding Citizen" is a movie that got me angrier than "Transformers 2" and more disappointed than "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." Yet, I'll probably watch it again. And again.

See, "Citizen" inspires a rare sort of hatred in me. 90% of it is a provocative, fearlessly cathartic and hauntingly relevant piece of social satire mixed with a grade-A action thriller script and top-notch acting across the board. That's why I'm going to watch it again, despite how terrible the ending was.

Without giving anything away, the movie spends all of its time making us know that Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a meticulous planner who's serious about getting even with the system of justice that allowed his wife and daughter's true killer to go free with a mere 3-year sentence. Literally every move the justice system and his ex-attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) make, Shelton has already set in motion countermeasures for that step and the next three they will take. Rice is characterised as a smarmy, ladder-climbing political manoeuvrer who cares more about his reputation as a prosecutor than dispensing actual justice. Not once during the course of the movie does he ever, ever admit that he was wrong not to pursue full conviction for both the killer and his accomplice, or even conceded that Shelton was cheated out of justice by a corrupt and broken system of law. "Some justice is better than no justice" is the phrase he uses to rationalise his decision. This being a very anti-establishment film, it's clear that the intention was for us to see Shelton as, though a morally ambiguous psychopath, a man who sees the justice system for what it really is: a mere system. A cold, soulless, illogical, by-the-book factory made up of bored and overworked people that treat justice "like it's an assembly line." Rice, therefore, represents the system then, in both occupation and personality: he's incorrigible, he's utterly cocky, and he refuses to acknowledge fault in himself or make any concessions for Shelton. Though he clearly believes in justice, he's still part of the problem. Right?

You're right. That was the intention. However, "Law Abiding Citizen" ends up being just another crime thriller. The "psychopath", the societal outcast, is punished and ceased, while the clean, self- righteous lawyer finishes the job just in time to make it to his little girl's cello recital. No, really. That's where it ends. In fact, once Shelton is killed, it cuts soundlessly to the recital and then goes black. A quiet, abrupt end. Despite everything that had been built up, it just ends.

I find it hard to believe that this was the original ending that the writer of "Equilibrium" intended to have. This movie reeks with the pungent stink of producer tampering. The quality and style of the ending doesn't match that of the rest of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if that was intentional, if that was Kurt Wimmer's way of spiting whoever forced him to change the ending, the one where the psychopath succeeds in uprooting the corrupt system, succeeds in bringing "the whole diseased, corrupt temple down on (Rice's) head". The ending was far from "biblical". It was a short, quiet, but mostly ugly, cop-out. Because of that, I'm cutting the score I would have given this movie, a 9, in half. It's rounded up because I feel like this movie could've really said something, could have stood out, had it not ended like every other movie that gets cranked out of the old Hollywood assembly line these days.

This was a great revenge movie, right up to the end. Obviously if the prosecutor had been some other actor, Gerard's character would have succeeded in his revenge plan, but of course they made Foxx the hero, while he was not. Butler was a very smart thinker, ever move was planned several plays ahead, he would have won, but they give Foxx the win, because this is Hollywood.

This film explores the hypocrisy of the US judicial system, by letting free a confessed murderer and rapist it explores a means lone quest to right the wrongs in his life.

It is a tense thriller with more than a little gore. Unfortunately the film does not have the bravery to follow its premise to the end.

It casts Jamie Foxx as the "hero" of the film, when in actual fact all of his deeds are to allow his career to progress, regardless of the victims.

The film tries hard to portray Foxx as the victim throughout, but it doesn't wash, when he never actually suffers any great hardship - other than missing his daughters cello recitals!

By the end of the film, you are looking for some kind of atonement from Foxx, however right at the end, he himself becomes a murderer.

For me this morality tail has missed the point somewhat. Ultimately to succeed is to have to no regard at all for the rule of law - even the mayor is advocating abusing civil rights!!

This movie was fabulous until the last 10 minutes. it was full of action and real characters. The characters had flaws. Through the entire movie Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) was not a character that I liked or sided with, while Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) was human and easy to empathize with. Although the entire movie required suspension of disbelief, the ending was unfulfilling and implausible given the rest of the movie. It was as if the villain was actually Rice with his corruptness, while Shelton was indeed a law-abiding citizen driven to vengeance by the corruptness of Rice and the justice system. The real disjustice was the ending of this movie. I kept expecting the intelligence shown by Shelton throughout the movie to come to a head in the ending. I was highly disappointed by the anti-climatic ending. Stop the movie about 10 before the end and create your own ending; it will be better than what was on-screen.

Law Abiding Citizen, in a way, is a movie that became too big for it's own good. The Gerard Butler character was a mastermind. He was so intelligent that no one could figure out how he was doing the things he was doing. So crafty, that no matter what safety precautions were taken, people were still dying. The problem, though, became very apparent as Citizen was nearing the last half hour. How do you explain it all. It's almost as if 3/4 of this movie was made, and then the makers remembered that they had to end this thing. And so they did. Only what we were given, the resolution to it all, was so anticlimactic (and for that matter, unbelievable) that it was almost laughable. I think it would have been better to leave it a mystery then to give the audience what was one of the most outlandish conclusions to a film I've seen in a long time. That's not to say that what came before this was a masterpiece. The dialogue was, at times decent, and at other times sub-par. The characters were never developed enough for people to really care about what happened to them, and the editing left something to be desired. But even with all of that I was still interested. I still wanted to see where all of this was going, and how all of this was happening. I shouldn't have been so eager. They say that sometimes, the unknown is much more intriguing than the known. I guess the makers of this film should have kept that in mind.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) lost his family to two killers. The guys are caught but the case goes south. D. A., Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is a wheeler dealer who has a 96% success rate. When some evidences get thrown out, Rice decides to do a deal with one perpetrator to convict the other. Years later, the execution is tampered with and goes terribly wrong. The other killer with the deal is also brutally murdered. Rice suspects Shelton but he only has circumstantial evidences. Shelton wants to show the justice system as being too lenient and he's willing to kill everybody in the system to prove it.

There is a problem of where the rooting interest for the audience should lie. Also there is the insane convoluted plot. Obviously one should never root for the crazy guy but why would a selfish lawyer be a compelling protagonist. Butler needs to play his character descending into outlandish crazy lunacy. Then there are all the crazy ways that he kills. It seemed cool and clever on my first viewing. However it doesn't work with more than one viewing. It becomes ridiculous with more contemplation. It's stupider and stupider. It wants to say something profound but ends up making an idiotic action thriller.

I didn't have high expectations for this movie and only went because my friend made me. That being said I loved it. I actually wanted to applaud and cheer at one point and I never do that. Clyde now ranks as on of my favorite characters ever. Now for the bad part. Jamie Foxx was horrible!!!!!!! I don't understand why directors and casting directors like to put bad actors against good actors. It seems to be an ever increasing trend in Hollywood. we saw it in "the Italian job" and we see it here. Jamie's acting was the worst I had seen in a long time. He showed no emotion at all. I would have liked to see a better actor cast but hey who am I? Also, listen up producers, the ending was ridiculous!!!! I mean come on. you build this character up only for a huge let down. That was by far one of the most irresponsible endings to a movie I have ever had the misfortune to see. When I tell people to see this I am recommending that they leave at a specific point about 15min before it's over and imagine your own ending because no matter what it will be better. Endings like that is the reason people watch independent films. This movie could have been an all time classic but for Jamie Foxx and the writer's lazy ending. It still may because I loved most of it. I pray someday producers figure out that we want something a little different and allow things to end the right way, the responsible way for their viewers.

Thank you,