This film is a thrilling story with unusual character motivation. Clyde Shelton is a law abiding citizen. He's a family fan who never does wrong. One day two crooks break into his home. During the robbery one of them kills his wife and daughter. The evidence is too weak for a conviction, but one of the crooks, the one who committed the murder, cuts a deal with the prosecution and testifies against his partner. As a result the murderer gets a light sentence, while the other crook is given the death penalty.
Are you with me so far? Good.
Fast forward 10 years. Shelton is a changed man. Disgusted by his wife and daughter's killer walking around free, he decides to take the law into his own hands. He takes revenge not just on the killer, but on everyone who was involved in the trial. After confessing to a series of murders he's arrested, but he manages to continue his revenge plot while sitting in prison. Does he have a helper on the outside? That's the question the prosecution lawyer has to answer.
Gerard Butler delivers an excellent performance. Apart from the one incident where he stabs his fellow cellmate to death we have sympathy with him. Maybe that scene should have been omitted, because all his other victims were those who he considered to be guilty. The cellmate was an innocent bystander. Nevertheless, haven't we all felt that way at some time in our lives? We know who is guilty of crimes, but we see them walk free because the law doesn't have enough proof to convict them? Don't we feel frustrated and tell ourselves that we could do a better job than the police or the legal system? Clyde Shelton represents us as someone who feels wronged and tries to make a difference.
I might have given this film 5 stars, except for the bland performance of Jamie Foxx as the prosecution lawyer. Foxx has never been a good actor, in my eyes. I've never seen him play a role convincingly. There are a dozen other actors who could have played the part better. Nevertheless, this is a film worth watching.
Okay. I know I mentioned this to you in person but I'm a nice person so I'll go ahead and write it down for you here as well and help you out with your traffic. lol!
ReplyDeleteI LOVED this movie. Again, I love dark movies, especially where the character goes through a dramatic change or re-image of himself right before my eyes that I can trace step by step through the movie and this movie did all of that. I love Butler and will always be a fan of his work no matter what (hopefully) but I think deducting a full 1 star from the movie just because of Jamie is ridiculous. To me he wasn't even a big part of the movie to me if I'm honest about it. He seemed more like a supporting character and while I agree that I have yet to see him play a role convincingly, Butler carried this movie off pretty damn well.
Also, about the cellmate scene. I actually liked that scene probably the most. It's the point where we see Butler's character go from sympathetic avenging angel to downright demonized criminal. He finally crosses the line of what we deem acceptable. We can accept that a man that sees his family murdered and "tortured" before his eyes is going to have a pretty damn heavy bone to pick with his attackers. We can accept that he may even go a little overboard to get the job done. But when he ends up killing an "innocent" (although he's a man in jail so we can't say how "innocent" he really is) gets in his way and goes down in such a horrible way. Hold up! Can we still sympathize with him or has he finally gone too far? In the beginning we see him as almost the hero type figure, a vigilante but one that we can get behind righteously against Foxx's character that is only interested in his quota of courtroom wins.
After that scene we see Butler become the villain, one that makes us question our own morality if presented with the same situation. How far would you go if you were in his shoes? How far is grief allowed to take us until we can excuse it no more? I loved that pivotal point of the movie because we see his transformation at that moment where it was first triggered in the beginning. Also, if you think of it rationally, he had no way of knowing if anything lighter would get him to where he needed to be so he had to do the most drastic thing possible and I think his lack of hesitation shows his full transformation as well.
Foxx, for me, wasn't memorable. Honestly I do admit that it would've been a bit better if Butler had a co-star who he could really and truly play off of but he truly made that movie really memorable for me. So I'd give it a 4.5 stars instead. I don't give Foxx that much credit to affect a movie. lol!
I see your point with the cellmate scene. The film's director was trying to shake our sympathy for Gerard Butler's character. I get it. However, I still remained sympathetic with him, despite what he did to the cellmate. Maybe the cellmate's past crimes could have been fleshed out a bit to make us hate him and feel that he deserved to die.
ReplyDeleteThe real bad guy in the film is Jamie Foxx. Maybe not bad in absolute black and white terms. Think of him as dark grey. His role in the film was pivotal as Butler's nemesis, so I stand by my decision to penalise the film a whole star.