- LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (DVD MOVIE)
Gerard Butler stars as Kable, condemned criminal and globally famous super-soldier in the ultimate multiplayer game, "Slayers.†Human controllers direct each thought and move of real-life prison inmates battling in hyper-intense environments â€" where the goal is freedom and the penalty is death. But when Kable suddenly decides he wants out, his rebellion threatens the twisted plans of game creator Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall, TV’s "Dexterâ€), who will stop at nothing to crush the renegade commando in this taut, adrenaline-packed action-thriller.Frenzied and relentlessly aggressive,
Gamer seeks to translate the sensory barrage of violent video games into movie form--and does a pretty successful job. In a dystopic future, prisoners on death row are given a slim chance of survival as flesh-and-blood avatars for shoot-'em-up game players who control th! eir very brains. The mastermind behind this game (played by Michael C. Hall,
Dexter) has secret ambitions worthy of a James Bond villain, but his schemes are threatened by John Tillman (Gerard Butler,
300), the only living avatar who's survived more than a few games--so Tillman's already dangerous life turns even more deadly.
Gamer revels in overkill: visual tricks abound as the action speeds up or slows down, skittering to and fro with jump cuts and flashes of light. The dialogue is a catalog of macho posturing or melodramatic exposition. The performances--from a surprising cast that includes Alison Lohman (
Drag Me to Hell), Kyra Sedgwick (
The Closer), Chris "Ludacris" Bridges (
Crash), and supermodel Amber Valletta--play cartoonish characters with exuberant gusto and commitment. By conventional standards,
Gamer is a terrible movie… but the movie's creators don't care, because they aspire to step beyond conventional standar! ds. As with their previous adrenaline-driven flick
Crank, the w riter-director team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor want viewers to plug in, turn off their rational minds, and immerse themselves in sheer sensation. --Bret Fetzer
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 01/19/2010 Run time: 95 minutes Rating: RGerard Butler stars as Kable, condemned criminal and globally famous super-soldier in the ultimate multiplayer game, "Slayers.†Human controllers direct each thought and move of real-life prison inmates battling in hyper-intense environments â€" where the goal is freedom and the penalty is death. But when Kable suddenly decides he wants out, his rebellion threatens the twisted plans of game creator Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall, TV’s "Dexterâ€), who will stop at nothing to crush the renegade commando in this taut, adrenaline-packed action-thriller.
Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is an upstanding family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered during a home invasion. When the killers are caught, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a hotshot young Philadelphia prosecutor, is assigned to the case. Over his objections, Nick is forced by his boss to offer one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice. Fast forward ten years. The man who got away with murder is found dead and Clyde Shelton admits his guilt. Then he issues a warning! to Nick: Either fix the flawed justice system, or key players in the trial will die. Soon Shelton follows through on his threats, orchestrating from his jail cell a string of spectacularly diabolical assassinations that can be neither predicted nor prevented. Only Nick can stop the killing and finds himself in a desperate race against time facing a deadly adversary who seems always to be one step ahead.The legal thriller meets the serial-killer shocker in Law Abiding Citizen. The story begins when home invaders kill Clyde Shelton's wife and daughter. The bereaved father (played by a thoroughly unsympathetic Gerard Butler) looks to slick Philly prosecutor Nick Rice (a low-key Jamie Foxx) to see that they receive the maximum sentence. Instead, the murderer, Ames, testifies against his accomplice, Darby, who gets the chair, while he gets 10 years. Upon his release, Ames' mutilated body turns up in an abandoned warehouse, and all roads lead to Shelton. Rice attempts to defend! him, but his client makes it impossible--Shelton wants to go ! to priso n--so he does time, but then members of Rice’s legal team start to die. The attorney suspects Shelton, but can't connect him to the crimes, so he races against the clock to save the lives of his assistant, Sarah (Leslie Bibb), D.A. Jonas (Bruce McGill), and his own wife and child. The movie may sound like a Yank reboot of the Japanese chiller Cure, in which an inmate kills from inside institutional walls, but plays more like a mash-up between The Silence of the Lambs, without the psychological complexity, and The Devil's Advocate, without the cynical giggles. F. Gary Gray got his start with hip-hop videos and urban action flicks, like Set It Off, until he hit the big time with his remake of The Italian Job. Law Abiding Citizen is a disappointing muddle from a director who's done better in the past and will surely do better in the future. --
Kathleen C. Fennessy
Stills from Law Abiding Citizen (Click for larger image) 
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