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Gerard Butler in "Law Abiding Citizen"

Law Abiding Citizen NOW PLAYING

R (2009) Publication Date Oct. 16, 2009

"It's going to get Biblical!" So promises the psychotic prime mover of the new thriller "Law Abiding Citizen." Now there's a lot of crazy stuff in the Bible, which would no doubt get an "R" from the MPAA for much the same reasons "Law Abiding Citizen" did. But this movie sets new standards of lunatic plotting as it goes about its smiting.

Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a seemingly everyday engineer who must watch helplessly as his wife and daughter are slaughtered by two random, home-invading sickos. When the case reaches the Philadelphia courts, it lands with hotshot prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), who touts his 96-percent conviction rate. In part because he's unwilling to risk his record, Rice insists on cutting a deal with one perp in order to ensure conviction for the other. "This is just how the justice system works," Nick explains, but Clyde is having none of it.

Ten years later, Nick is still upwardly mobile, missing his daughter's violin recital (yet again) to attend an execution. The man strapped to the table is one of Clyde's tormenters, and when the execution goes horribly wrong, it's not long before the authorities realize that Clyde has begun his own search for vigilante justice. But he's not content with getting back at the two killers; now he's at "war" with "this broken thing" called the justice system. (The crisis reaches all the way up to the character simply called "Mayor," played -- unfortunately for her -- by recent Oscar nominee Viola Davis.)

The return of director F. Gary Gray ("The Italian Job") is a brain-dead revenger's drama casting Clyde as a sort of Special Forces version of Hannibal Lecter; the government-contracted engineer turns out to be "a born tactician" capable of anything. Early on, Clyde is tossed into maximum-security prison, but he still manages to go on a rampage that holds the entire city hostage. How? That would be telling, but believe me, you don't want to know. The big reveal about how Clyde is serial-killing from his cell wins, hands down, Most Ludicrous Plot Device of 2009.

Nothing much makes sense in "Law Abiding Citizen," though: not the fact that Clyde tolerates Nick, who should be an equal object of Clyde's anger; not Clyde's labyrinthine stratagems; and not the film's implicit sympathy with Clyde as he sticks it to the man. On a primal -- and most certainly base level -- "Law Abiding Citizen" is something of a crowd pleaser, and only because it is so ludicrous. Since the story is impossible to mistake for reality, the audience gets license to enjoy seeing murderers and fat cats pay for their transgressions. But the tragedy isn't what happens in the movie; it's what happens in the movie theater.

Rated R for violence and torture, a scene of rape and pervasive language. 1 hour, 48 minutes.

- Peter Canavese