Law Abiding Citizen

After his wife and child are murdered and their killer set free, Clyde Shelton decides to take matters into his own hands and begins punishing all of those people (the killer, the judge who set him free and even the prosecutor) who were responsible for the miscarriage of justice.

For the first part of Law Abiding Citizen it was easy for the audience to get wrapped up in the story. They were shown just what happened to Clyde, his wife and child and could empathize with him as he watched prosecutor Nick Rice (played in a very uninspiring fashion by Jamie Foxx) let the killer walk free. In their minds, they were confronted with the same dilemma Clyde was, what would you do if the legal system failed you? The morality of the situation formed the backdrop of the rest of the film, with Clyde choosing the “eye for an eye” approach when it came to dealing with criminals and Nick (obviously) representing the side of the law. Each tried to convenience the other that their way was the way justice should be done, however after the major twist to the story was revealed (regarding Clyde’s past), that moral showdown was put on the backburner in lieu of bigger explosions and more insane ways for the people surrounding Nick and the case to be killed. Perhaps most disappointing, aside from this incongruous change in tone, was Nick’s own actions at the end of the film. His final solution for how to deal with Clyde ran counter to everything he had said and fought for up to that point, rendering the entire meaning behind the film mute and making Law Abiding Citizen just another monotonous crime thriller with nothing new to say.

Grade: D+

Gamer: I liked it better when it was called "The Running Man"

In the year 2034 a large scale online game called “Slayers” allows people to control convicted felons and them face off in a life or death struggle. But a wrongfully convicted soldier named Kable looks to change this by bringing down the online worlds’ evil architect, a man named Castle.

From its chaotic beginning, which dumped the audience into one of the online Slayer battlefields and left them to dangle as they tried to figure out just what was happening, to the obscenely pornographic levels of violence throughout the multiple battles Kable (a sadly underutilized Gerard Butler) went through in order to get to Castle and gain his freedom, Gamer was an absolute mess of a film which failed to be entertaining. The only thing the directors (there’s your first sign that a movie is not going to be Oscar worthy, the need for two directors) seemed interested in was trying to show newer ways to dispatch human lives. There were no redeeming qualities to the characters, no logic to the story or any remarkable special effects.

If you’re looking for a film that somewhat successfully entertains an audience while positing and even attempting to answer the big moral question of whether allowing prisoners to win their freedom by participating in a death match for the amusement of the masses, check out 1987’s The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and keep a safe distance from Gamer.

Grade: D-