The Good

An action film that keeps raising the stakes.

The Bad

This movie is highly implausible.Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a family whose wife and daughter are killed in a home invasion. When hot shot prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) uses one of the killers to testify against the other, he feels that politically that makes more sense. However, the person who actually killed Shelton's family is the one whose life is spared. So, flash forward 10 years and the wrong killer (I don't know if that sentence makes sense) is killed, and the real bad guy is aided out by a random stranger who keeps helping him evade authorities. Eventually, Shelton gets his man but it doesn't end there. He is out to get Rice and from the prison cell that he now finds himself in, Shelton uses all of his special ops training to hold the city of Philadelphia hostage.

While this movie seems to be going for entertainment as well as making political statements (Shelton is supposed to be seen as an avenging angel and a terrorist, Rice represents an inept legal system in the war on terror, the bad guys are the bad guys even when the less bad of them gets killed, etc.), it seems to lose touch with reality at some point. I just found it very hard to believe that much of this movie could ever happen.

Director F. Gary Gray does his best with the material and the actors seem to enjoy chewing the scenery. For purely entertainment purposes Law Abiding Citizen watching, however anybody expecting anything resembling a modicum of actual substance will most likely be sorely disappointed.

Features

The Blu-ray version comes with extras. This release is a burned copy sent over from Starz/Anchor Bay and it only contained the movie on Blu-ray D.

Video

Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC. Video resolution: 1080p. Aspect ratio: 2.39:1. Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1. This movie had a blown out/smokey look. The images were solid but because this is a burned copy of a Blu-ray disc it is hard to say if that is how this movie is going to look on its final release. F. Gary Gray and his cinematographer Jonathan Sela have done their best to give this movie the look of 1980s Peter Hyams/Sidney Lumet films. This works in parts but because this movie is so dependent on the action building the character it sometimes doesn't clash successfully.

Audio

English Dolby TrueHD 5.1- English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (less) / English SDH, Spanish Spanish (less). The audio for this movie was big. I will give it that. However, with this only being a burned disc I am reticent to say how good (or bad) the final product might ultimately be. I would say if you are collecting Blu-rays to get that home theater experience you will be extremely satisfied with the results. This is the kind of movie that plays really well in the next gen format. It is big, rich and full. Because of that it can't help but assault your living room or home theater set-up.

Package

Again, Starz/Anchor Bay, in an effort to get a quicker review, sent over this release in a a simple Blu-ray case with a burned disc. That said, there is no packaging to really talk about. If you want to see it check it out at MovieWeb.com.

Final Word

I thought when you win an Academy Award you're supposed to do good movies. Now, Gerard Butler is up and coming as a new action guy and, lets be honest, with movies like Gamer on his resume, nobody is really expecting great things.

However, Jamie Foxx used to do good movies. Even when the movie wasn't good he was good in it (ie. Bait). I don't know what has happened to him but rather than try and do movies that save humanity (which all actors seem to strive for once they win Academy gold), he has gone on to do Stealth, Valentine's Day and the upcoming Due Date. Sure, he did The Kingdom (which was excellent) and The Soloist, but his is a career that could fast be coming a cautionary tale if he doesn't go back to being himself.

The Blu-ray release of Law Abiding Citizen has all the requisite things we want from releases of this nature. It is big, it looks good, but it ends there.