Movie Review: Law Abiding Citizen

A. O. SCOTT: It’s about the cat-and-mouse game between two very smart guys, and it’s perfectly happy to be as dumb as it wants.

Nate, San Francisco: not every movie has to make a statement, some are just for entertainment. and, so with that perspective, this movie was pretty good, about how the justice system in our great country is really reduced to dealmaking and how to get things done in a country where the constitution is our binding fabric. that said, the movie was entertaining until the last ten minutes, where it went into cliche good guy has to win mode, when, in fact, none of the characters were good.

SHOOT: I've seen Gerard Butler in 'Gamer', and I wonder whether he has any savvy when sniffing out a good career-move movie. Because Law Abiding Citizen might attract him to the dumb mob, but they're a fickle forgetful lot. I decided to pass on this vicious garbage.

clipped from movies.nytimes.com “Law Abiding Citizen,” a blunt and sadistic revenge thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, occasionally pauses from the mayhem to stage a solemn debate about law, justice and morality. Mr. Butler, playing a family man whose wife and daughter were murdered by thugs, feels he was let down by the system, which gave one of the thugs a light sentence in exchange for testimony against the other thug, who was sentenced to death. Mr. Foxx, the prosecutor who made that deal, thinks that the system, however imperfect, did its job. But really, “Law Abiding Citizen” has about as much to say about real-life legal issues as “Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen” had to say about defense policy. And it has less ethical gravity than any three of the “Saw” movies. Though it sometimes puts on a serious face, this movie, directed with snarling, snappish style by F. Gary Gray (“The Italian Job”), wears its preposterousness with a certain pride.