You can’t change fate.

Law Abiding Citizen.

You can’t change fate is what the killer says to Gerard Butler before he rapes and murders his wife and child, while the killers accomplice watches.

2 men break into Butlers house – a random act of violence. They knock him out – with a baseball bat as soon as he opens the door. They tie him up, but he wakes up to see his wife and child get killed.

1 year later and the killers are up for trial, and Jaime Foxx is prosecuting them. The fat one, the guy who actually killed the wife and child, plea bargains and testifies that his accomplice, the skinny guy – who really didn’t do anything but watch, was the real killer.
Why would they plea bargain when there’s supposed DNA evidence is stupid, but the judge ruled that the DNA evidence was not admissible (if she hadn’t, there’d be no movie). So anyway the real killer gets 5 years (one hell of good bargain) and the other guy gets the death sentence. Foxx wins a lot of cases, so he wants justice, but is willing to compromise to get it, so he thinks the deal was ok.

10 years later…

So the skinny guy is being executed and when the inject him, he starts to twitch and you see that he had a painful death. That causes an investigation and Jaime Foxx and Colm Meaney (Chief Miles O’Brien from Star Trek – one of my fave characters of all Treks) are called in to TCB (take care o business).

Of course it’s Butler, and he ends up capturing the fat guy (who was a real piece of crap and was basically laughing at the fact that he got off), and when Butler catches him and straps him to a table, they don’t show what happens…BUT they talk about it. And what they say is the most satisfying revenge I have ever heard of. I mean the revenge is BEYOND what I thought this movie would do. I thought Exterminator (a much better film) was pretty harsh! That had a meat grinder in it! But Butler really gets a good revenge and you are really happy with it…in fact, it may be too much revenge, if that is even possible…I mean gosh…like really.

But he is a killer now, so he has to go to jail…which he does. He then starts to use the law to his advantage, like the criminals do. You see for the past 10 years, he’s studied up and he also has secret skills that we don’t know about. Anyway, he’s been planning this for 10 years.

At this point the movie changes, act 1 – revenge on the killers, act 2 – revenge on the system. He starts to kill the innocent people…but they are not all that innocent. The lawyer who defended those killers knew they were guilty, but the law allows for people to have defence. The judge was a bitch etc. Actually one great part was where Butler is up for bail and Foxx says they should deny it. Butler argues his way out of it, using the usual BS stuff that is said when guys get out on bail, but when he is about to be granted bail, he gets angry that they would give him bail, because he’s obviously guilty. I loved that part and really laughed at it…in a good way, not making fun of.

Anywho, the rest is played as we thought it would…he bargains for stuff, Foxx cant do anything but play along etc.

The movie was pretty fun to watch, and I may even end up buying it. It was fun, as expected and that’s about all I wanted out of it anyway. Don’t think too much about the morality on it, cause no one is perfect anyway, and this film doesn’t really get down to the real subject of justice…it’s more of a action movie perception of justice, if that means anything to you.

3/5

J-Man