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Law abiding Citizen

I found the storyline in the ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ very refreshing. The film classifies itself as a thrilling drama but within the category, I think I want to narrow down this film into an ‘anti-hero’ category. In simple term, anti hero film is films whose heroes are the villains, the criminals or the vigilante. Films glorifying orang jahat. Remember Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Al Pacino in The Godfather series and etc. They are examples of anti hero films.

But the similarities end there. In most of the anti-hero films, the central bad guys or the main actors in the film are not portrayed very negatively. Leonardo’s character in Blood

Diamond, Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Al Pacino in Godfather and Scarface and etc. are business men – albeit in a bad-type of businesses and conducting bad way of doing business. Still, the films were presented from their angles. To sum up, you can still like the character. In Law Abiding Citizen however, Gerard Butler’s character was different. He is a terrorist. Watch the film and tell whether you sympathise with him midway of the film.

The other aspect of the film is about vigilante. But in most vigilante films, the hero will normally kills the baddies at the end of the film. Remember Death Wish series (1974, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1994), The Punisher (1989, 2004) and many more. In this film however, Gerard Butler accidentally exploded himself. So that is another difference.

In Law Abiding Citizen, the central question in the film is how do we catch a murderer, when he/she is already in jail? Gerard Butler played the said loving husband and who was forced to see his wife and daughter being raped and killed. The police caught the baddies but due to a plea bargaining, one of the baddies walks free. This was his beef. He is so angry with the justice system seeing his wife’s rapier walks free. This is when the real story starts.

First, he sabotages the execution of one of the baddie so that the baddie dies in terrible pain. Then he kidnapped the other baddie and executed him himself. There was neither mercy nor formality in the execution. Gerard made a confession but in the court, he managed to outsmart the District Attorney, played by Jamie Foxx. He was acquitted but instead of finding peace, he strengthens his resolve that the justice system was wrong. So Gerard then turned into one by one of the stakeholders in the system – the judge, the attorney and police officers were killed and Gerard made no bones that he was the one who did it.

But where is the proof? This is the central question in the film. How would the District Attorney @ Jamie Foxx convict the killer @ Gerand Butler when Gerard is already in jail?

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