But there is no urgency to the drama of as Shelton’s revenge scenario – Gray lets the grieving anti-hero devolve into a straightforward villain, no more believable and far less scary than your standard slasher-movie psycho. Gray, who has made silk-purse films out of sow-ear storylines in the past ( Set It Off, 1995 The Negotiator, 1996 The Italian Job, 2003), has no trouble framing the set-ups and capturing the ugliness of the darker moments of this perpetually icky film (the Shelton family murder, which occurs 45 seconds into the film, is plain sick the video of Darby’s butchering, sent to Price’s home and viewed by his teenage daughter and wife, is revolting).

His giddyingly-implausible plan is to enact revenge against the District Attorney who cut the deal, the legal system that allows the virtuous to die in vain, and a society that values the rights of the criminal over the memory of the victim. Shelton straps Darby to a gurney in an abandoned warehouse and proceeds to dismember the fully-conscious villain, before a video camera. Nick Price (Jamie Foxx, phoning in his 'unruffable cool’ persona) and sends Rupert to the needle in exchange for a reduced sentence.īut Shelton will not rest until he wreaks vengeance and – initiating a series of coincidences that are the first signs that logic will play no part in the story – paralyses Darby with the poison of a Caribbean puffer fish (readily available in wintry Philadelphia, apparently). Though the culprits are caught, justice is short-lived when Darby cuts a deal with slick D.A.

One of the more repugnant examples of Hollywood’s cheap-thrill approach to violence, its voyeuristic brutality is matched only by its innate stupidity.īutler is Clyde Shelton, an average Joe who saw his wife and daughter murdered by two thrill-killing home intruders, Clarence Darby (a cartoonishly-bad Christian Stolte) and his offsider Rupert Aames (Josh Stewart). Gary Gray’s fatalistic fairytale Law Abiding Citizen. The great Mahatma Gandhi, decrying the futility of acts of revenge, once said, 'An eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind.' They are sage words that Gerard Butler should have considered before dishing out liberal doses of vigilante justice (or, indeed, accepting the lead role) in F.

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