Law Abiding Citizen Discussion - Page 2

Anyone picking this up today or has seen the SUPER FANTASTIC UNRATED DIRECTORS' CUT!!! (sorry, those things seem so masturbatory). Wondering what the difference between the cuts because, ending aside, it feels like a pretty tightly plot and cut film.

I am simultaneously proud and sketched out that I guessed the t-bone-shank thing from the moment Butler specifically asked for a porterhouse steak


PH is my favorite cut of beef, so I guess that's why I could figure out why he asked for it.

That henchman as in Taye Diggs? I thought Wimmer said that there was to be a huge fight scene but had to cut it short due to Diggs being needed for another film.

I agree, the last 5min of this film ruined it for me.

I think that was in terms of the fight with Angus Macfadyen being different and not handslappy pushing hands tai chi, not the one with Diggs.

That said, doing the unexpected isn't always the best thing, and the ending for Law Abiding Citizen was just crap.

The Director's Cut features a more gory torture scene at the beginning. It actually kind of cool.

I thought the sequence where Butler tells Fox that he's going to kill "everyone" - and then, in the very scene, Fox says something like "gather the team together!", to be hilarious. I mean, how was it ever going to be the right idea? "Let's gather into a small room, that will surely foil the MASTER BOMB MAKER".

This movie had some good (pretty much every scene with Butler). But some really, really bad (most notably the last 5 minutes or so topped off by: "I won't shoot you, but I'll be damned if I won't let this napalm burn you and everyone in this jail alive!").

Watched this instead of the Oscars last night. I really liked this flick. Yea the ending is both impossible and stupid but oh well the whole movie is pretty impossible and stupid. Butler was so great in this that you wanted to see him keep killing people. I can't be the only one here who wanted to see city hall go up in flames can I?

I see people talking about Foxx not getting his enough and I agree with that part. It was really odd who Foxx also had a wife and daughter but after the video was sent that hardly played a part. I'm glad we did not get cliche (Butler going to do something to the wife and kid but then flashes back to his wife and kid and just stands there crying) but it was weird.

Still if you go in not wanting anything but over the top revenge this movie is a fun ride that doesn't out live it's welcome. Also I was glad to see Bruce McGill and Colm Meaney get some real screen time.

Well, I didn't much care whether it happened or not, which is almost the same thing.

This should have been a series of films ala Death Wish. What the fuck were you thinking F Gary Gray, Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx?

The movie is pretty great up until that third act.

I could not figure out what they were thinking with the torture scene. It was way too violent for the audience for this movie (adults in middle America who read crappy paperback thrillers). I didn't realize until I skimmed over this thread that I had seen an "unrated director's cut" and that scene wasn't the same in the theatrical cut. It makes more sense now. Was the t-bone stab just as insanely over-the-top violent in the original cut?

The ending reeked of Collateral. Does Jamie Foxx have a, "I must win at the end because I'm Jamie Foxx!" clause in his contracts or something? That's twice he's been in a 'showdown' flick where the film was ruined by forcing him to win at the end despite it being completely unrealistic and thematically boring.

I can't remember the last time a film so completely lost me in the final minutes. I would have rated it about an 8 with 15 minutes left... now I rate it a 4. The worst part wasn't even the goofy twists required to make Foxx's lawyer win, it was that his character was such a complete douchebag ("Our daughter was sent a snuff film? Handle it woman, I'll be home late!") that his big triumph went over like a loud fart in an elevator.

Surprisingly, GAMER was the significantly better Butler action flick.

I haven't seen the unrated xtreme edition, but I don't see what else they could have done with the t-bone scene.
Butler jabs the guy a bunch of times in the neck and everything's covered in blood. Then he relaxes in his awesome bed.

He could have licked it and started sucking on the bone.

Caught this last night and agree with most of the comments above. I managed to avoid any spoilers for the last two years so I went in fresh.

 

Butler is, indeed, magnetic, and makes for a better protagonist than Jamie Fox. That is, in the first half he does as it seems that he's an intelligent man that has had ten years to plan. The whole spy angle in the second half escalated to a place it didn't need to go, and the third act reveal of the tunnels beneath the prison was too much to swallow. 

 

At first it's a cool concept, but once the logistics are considered the whole thing falls apart. This is Joker pulling his bus out of a smashed hole in the side of a building into a line of buses level of ludicrousness, but it worked there because the Joker is kept at a distance from the audience. Here, however, we're exposed to Butler intricately and it all seemed so silly. 

 

The movie pulls punches, as I thought it would go to dark places and have Butler actually go all-out villain and target Fox's family. Instead he attacks "the system", which is boring. Butler used to work for the government, he has no feelings about his former service that could supersede a failing legal system? Still, highly entertaining. 

 

It was disconcerting, however, when I brought the movie up to my freshman Comp classes. The 18 year olds responded quite vocally, loving the movie not just as a compelling thriller but as inspiring philosophy. These must be the kind of kids that can quote Jigsaw and rooted for the Joker, because they act like Butler's self-destructive mission is somehow righteous and enlightening. 

Anarchy pulls the weak/morally vacant minded like moths to the flame. Chaos reigns for these or those kind of people i'd say.

I think it also speaks as to how broken the justice system is. Not to mention in the end the villain is right. Not in the moral sense of course but in the sense that they couldn't use the system to beat him. Like him, they had to go outside the system to beat him.