Law Abiding Citizen

The Movie Law Abiding Citizen was released 2009. The director was F. Gary Gray and the actors were Jamie Foxx played Nick Rice his role was the lawyer, husband, father and friend. Gerard Butler played Clyde Shelton his role was the husband, father, victim, and convict. Colm Meaney played Detective Dunnigan his role a detective in the movie. Bruce McGill played Jonas Cantrell his role was an officer and a friend. In 1999 Philadelphia, Clarence James Darby (Christian Stolte) and his accomplice Rupert Ames (Josh Stewart), invade the home of Clyde Alexander Shelton (Gerard Butler), killing his wife and daughter before his eyes.

Prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is unable to use DNA evidence to convict the two, and is unwilling to take a chance on trying both suspects and maybe lowering his high conviction rate. So he bargains with Darby, letting him plead guilty to a lesser charge with a reduced sentence in return for testifying against Ames. Ames is found guilty and is sentenced to death. Darby is released after a few years. Shelton feels betrayed by Rice’s actions and the justice system at large.10 years later, Ames’s death row sentence is up, and he is placed on the machine. Unknown to the prosecutors and the witnesses, the cardio toxic agent used for executions is replaced with an anticonvulsant, causing Ames to die an extremely painful death.

Evidence of tampering with the machine leads to Darby. An anonymous caller alerts Darby as the police draw near, and directs him to a remote location. Shelton reveals himself as the caller, and paralyzes Darby with tetra do toxin. He takes Darby to a nearby warehouse, straps him to a table, and dismembers him, video recording the graphic proceedings. Darby’s remains are found, and evidence ties his death to Shelton. Rice and his team track Shelton to a remote cabin, where he willingly gives himself up. Rice initially refuses to bargain with Shelton to obtain a full confession once he learns his wife and daughter were sent the dismemberment recording and were traumatized by it. But District Attorney Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill) orders Rice to make a deal.

In court, Shelton represents himself. He successfully argues that he should be granted bail, and then berates the judge for accepting the “bullshit” legal precedents he had cited and for being too eager to let madmen and murderers back on the street. The judge reverses herself and sends him back to jail for contempt of court. During his next interrogation, Shelton demands a fancy steak dinner to be delivered to his cell by a specific time, in return for telling where to find Darby’s lawyer, who it turns out was reported missing three days earlier. Rice agrees, though the dinner is delayed by a few minutes due to the warden’s security measures.

Once he has his meal, Shelton provides a set of coordinates, where Rice and the others find the corpse of Darby’s lawyer, who had been buried alive and had suffocated when his air supply ran out a few minutes earlier, with virtually the same amount of time by which Shelton’s dinner was delayed. Meanwhile, Shelton kills his cellmate by repeatedly stabbing him with the steak bone, forcing the warden to secure him in solitary confinement. Realizing Shelton’s ingenuity, Cantrell arranges a meeting with a CIA contact and bring Rice along. They learn that Shelton has previously worked with the agency as a technical expert in creating devices to assassinate targets in imaginative, remote ways.

Moreover, they are warned that Shelton is capable of killing anyone he sets his sights on. During a meeting with Rice and Cantrell, the judge is killed when she answers her cell phone and it explodes while being held against her ear. Several of Rice’s assistants, including Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb), are killed by car bombs. As Rice and Cantrell leave the funeral for one of Rice’s assistants, Cantrell is killed by a remote-controlled weaponized bomb disposal unit. The mayor (Viola Davis) puts the city under lockdown and promotes Rice to acting District Attorney, demanding that he resolve the matter. Rice, from an email Lowell had previously sent, discovers that Shelton owns an auto garage next to the prison.

There, he and a detective discover a tunnel leading to a cache of guns, disguises, and other equipment below the solitary confinement cells, along with a secret entrance into each cell. He realizes Shelton wanted to be in solitary, allowing him to easily leave the prison without detection and perform the murders himself. Evidence in the tunnel points Rice to Shelton’s next target, city hall, where the mayor is holding an emergency meeting with city officials. Rice and his men cannot find Shelton, but do discover evidence pointing to a cell-phone-activated suitcase bomb filled with napalm in the room directly below the meeting; if tripped, the bomb would wipe out everyone at the meeting. Shelton returns to his garage after planting the bomb, and returns to his cell.

He is surprised to find Rice waiting for him. Rice berates Shelton for continuing his path of revenge because of the pain he suffered. Shelton offers another deal, but Rice refuses this time, saying that he does not make deals with murderers anymore, though he thanks Shelton for teaching him that.

Despite being pleased that Rice had finally learned this lesson, Shelton calls the cell phone on the bomb without remorse. Upon this, Rice secures Shelton in the room and flees. Shelton realizes too late that Rice has placed the bomb under his cot and that the entrance to the tunnel has been blocked. Seeing that he has lost, Shelton looks upon his daughter’s bracelet with a sense of sadness, accepting his fate as the bomb explodes, killing him.