“Law Abiding Citizen” Review/Fact-Check

Image copyright Overture Films
Image copyright Overture Films

Which of these two scenarios is more ridiculous?

A) Law Abiding Citizen made it through the entire studio development process, from writing to post-production, without anyone involved ever realizing that there’s supposed to be a hyphen between the words “Law” and “Abiding”;

or B) Some marketing executive at Overture Films decided that incorrect punctuation is somehow “cutting-edge.”

Speaking of ridiculous scenarios, the film’s plot runs as follows: Family man Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler, comfortably settled into his smirking-badass persona) watches helplessly as two criminals break into his home and murder his wife and young daughter. Insult is added to injury when Assistant DA Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) allows Criminal #1 to receive only three years in jail in return for testifying against Criminal #2, who gets the death penalty. “Some justice is better than no justice,” Rice says. Ten years later, Shelton launches a grassroots lobbying campaign to reform the state’s criminal code, ensuring that such a travesty is never repeated again.

Nah, just kidding. He turns out to be some kind of super-hitman and kills a bunch of people.

Since the entirety of Law Abiding Citizen‘s plot revolves around the original miscarriage of justice which allows Criminal #1 to go free (and which is presented not as a fluke but as a symptom of a fundamentally broken justice system), I asked two BU Criminal Justice assistant professors, Mary Ellen Mastrorilli and Shea Cronin, how realistic such a scenario would be.  Mastrorilli said that the general idea of showing significant leniency to a cooperating witness is indeed believable, noting that “Boston’s own Kevin Weeks became a cooperating witness for the FBI in the case against Whitey Bulger.  Weeks was implicated in several murders and was given a five-year sentence.”

However, Cronin believes that the movie takes that idea too far.  “Usually in that kind of case the evidence would be so overwhelming that the only deal that the suspect could really make would be the difference between death row and life in prison,” Cronin said.  “[Criminal #1] also would’ve committed many other offenses in that case that they also could have used as leverage to get him to plead guilty to something else…  In the process of a home invasion and murder and stabbing you commit many, many offenses that could all be stacked on top of each other.”  Cronin also takes issue with the idea that Shelton’s testimony would be totally invalid in a trial, or that the “exclusionary rule” would prevent DNA evidence from being used.  “The only evidence that wouldn’t be permissible,” he said, “would be if they went and illegally searched the offenders’ homes, or vehicles, or stuff like that, but it doesn’t seem like that would happen in this case, because all the evidence is right there in the victims’ home.”

Unfortunately, even if that aspect of the plot had been completely plausible, any chance the film had of being taken seriously would be blown to pieces by the preposterousness of Shelton’s character. Put simply, he’s a dumb person’s idea of a smart person. The screenwriter, Kurt Wimmer, wants us to accept that Shelton is super-intelligent, but doesn’t come up with anything demonstrably super-intelligent for Shelton to do. We’re supposed to accept Shelton’s mental superiority because he performs simplistic rhetorical tricks (as when he fools the supposedly smart Rice with an obvious non-confession) or manages Houdini-esque feats that make absolutely no sense.  I won’t tell you how Shelton manages to kill people while locked up in a maximum-security prison, but I doubt that real-life criminals will be taking notes.  (Rice’s character is only somewhat better; what kind of Assistant DA treks back and forth from crime scene to crime scene like that?)

Don’t get me wrong, Law Abiding Citizen has its merits.  Its cinematography depicts Philadelphia in lush shades of wintry grime, and the suspense sequences move at a breezy, entertaining clip.  Even the plot holes, if seen in an optimistic light, provide some campy humor.  In fact, many people who go to this movie looking for a quick popcorn thriller will walk out of the theater satisfied.  For me, though, films live or die based on their storytelling, and the stories they tell shouldn’t be completely, obliviously ludicrous.  If the creators of this movie want to comment on real-world issues, they should first acquaint themselves with the real world.

And would it have killed them to add a hyphen?

About Matt Hoffman

Matt Hoffman (COM/CAS '10) is a film writer for the Quad, and is currently majoring in Film and International Relations at BU. His writing can also be found at Pegleg Spinners, Super Tuesdays and Mania.com. He grew up in Connecticut and is not a pro BMX biker.

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