This is a marvellous black comedy. The whole point of the
movie is that there is no point, and that your life can turn to shit, and you
will never know why, no matter how many authorities you appeal to for an
explanation. It's the atheist Book of Job. So if you think you could watch a
film that tells you that a blind, uncaring universe could easily randomly
select you for sufficient misfortune to ruin your life, I highly recommend it.
The Coen Brothers are on fire right now.
Views, Reviews, and Inflammatory Comments on the subject of Cinema.
Monday 7 December 2009
Law Abiding Citizen
So Gerard Butler is having a nice evening in when all of a sudden, he's
interrupted by a couple of psychos who break in, tie him up, kill his wife and
kid, and start nicking his stuff.
Because they are not bright criminal geniuses, they leave him alive, and they
are brought to trial. In order to secure some kind of conviction, they get the
guy who did kill the wife and kid to inform on the other one. It's not
abundantly clear why it couldn't have been the other way round. So the big bad
guy gets 3rd degree murder and a light sentence, the sidekick gets death row.
The justice of the situation escapes Gerard Butler.
So, ten years later, when the sidekick is finally executed, (and nobody
involved in the film appears to have aged a day) Gerard Butler decides to get
his revenge on the justice system. He rigs the execution to be tortuously
painful, kidnaps the main bad guy, tortures him to death while filming it, and
posts a DVD of it to the DA who did the deal freeing the guy. Some would call
that an overreaction, but that's just for openers. Butler, it seems, is some
kind of CIA tactical genius assassin bloke who seemingly has prepared for this
moment by boobytrapping the entire world, so that he can go on killing the
people he deems responsible for this miscarriage of justice until he is
satisfied that his not entirely clear lesson has been learned.
There's two major flaws here though.
1) If you're going to play "here is a genius who has planned your demise with
meticulous detail" you kind of want some inventive methods of ironic execution.
Whereas in fact, his tactically feendeesh revenge pretty much runs to a few car
bombs. Imagine if the film Seven had all seven murders being "Kevin Spacey
Shoots Some Dude" and you're beginning to see the problem.
2) It has no idea where it's going. Butler has no great masterplan, just a
ticky list of people who he sort of wants to kill. He starts off quite well,
but quickly loses momentum, and the film kind of rolls to a gentle halt at the
end.
Ultimately the question is not whether this is a childish and gruesome revenge
fantasy thriller - it is - but whether it's a good one. It really isn't.
interrupted by a couple of psychos who break in, tie him up, kill his wife and
kid, and start nicking his stuff.
Because they are not bright criminal geniuses, they leave him alive, and they
are brought to trial. In order to secure some kind of conviction, they get the
guy who did kill the wife and kid to inform on the other one. It's not
abundantly clear why it couldn't have been the other way round. So the big bad
guy gets 3rd degree murder and a light sentence, the sidekick gets death row.
The justice of the situation escapes Gerard Butler.
So, ten years later, when the sidekick is finally executed, (and nobody
involved in the film appears to have aged a day) Gerard Butler decides to get
his revenge on the justice system. He rigs the execution to be tortuously
painful, kidnaps the main bad guy, tortures him to death while filming it, and
posts a DVD of it to the DA who did the deal freeing the guy. Some would call
that an overreaction, but that's just for openers. Butler, it seems, is some
kind of CIA tactical genius assassin bloke who seemingly has prepared for this
moment by boobytrapping the entire world, so that he can go on killing the
people he deems responsible for this miscarriage of justice until he is
satisfied that his not entirely clear lesson has been learned.
There's two major flaws here though.
1) If you're going to play "here is a genius who has planned your demise with
meticulous detail" you kind of want some inventive methods of ironic execution.
Whereas in fact, his tactically feendeesh revenge pretty much runs to a few car
bombs. Imagine if the film Seven had all seven murders being "Kevin Spacey
Shoots Some Dude" and you're beginning to see the problem.
2) It has no idea where it's going. Butler has no great masterplan, just a
ticky list of people who he sort of wants to kill. He starts off quite well,
but quickly loses momentum, and the film kind of rolls to a gentle halt at the
end.
Ultimately the question is not whether this is a childish and gruesome revenge
fantasy thriller - it is - but whether it's a good one. It really isn't.
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