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Law Abiding Citizen
A frustrated man decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets one of his family's killers free. He targets not only the killer but also the district attorney and others involved in the deal.
2009 · Directed by F. Gary Gray · 109 min · Drama · Crime · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 11 frames
Tagline
Justice at any cost.
Plot
Clyde Shelton lives with his wife and daughter in Philadelphia when two burglars, Rupert Ames and Clarence Darby, break into their home. Ames ties up and gags Clyde, while Darby stabs him in the stomach before raping and murdering his wife and daughter. Prosecutor Nick Rice is assigned to the case along with District Attorney Jonas Cantrell. Unwilling to risk lowering his high conviction rate due to insufficient evidence, Nick agrees to a plea bargain. Clyde begs Nick not to make a deal with Darby, but he does so anyway. Darby testifies against Ames, who is convicted of felony murder and sentenced to death, while Darby pleads guilty to third-degree murder and will serve three years in prison before being released on parole. During a press conference, Darby publicly thanks Nick and shakes his hand as Clyde watches from afar.
A decade later, Ames expresses remorse for his role in the burglary, but maintains his innocence in the murders. He is executed via lethal injection, but the procedure goes awry and he dies in agony. Nick and Cantrell discover that the drugs were replaced with an anticonvulsant. Meanwhile, Darby is warned by an anonymous caller of incoming police and instructs him to flee his apartment and take an officer hostage. The officer is revealed to be Clyde in disguise; Darby attempts to shoot him, but is paralyzed by tetrodotoxin-laced spikes hidden in the gun's handle. Clyde records himself torturing and killing Darby as he is strapped to a table. After Darby's remains are found inside an abandoned warehouse owned by Clyde, he is arrested.
During interrogation, Nick confronts Clyde for mailing a copy of Darby's murder to his daughter Denise. Clyde represents himself at his bail hearing, where Judge Laura Burch, who previously presided over Darby's plea deal, initially grants him bail. When Clyde accuses Burch of being too easily swayed by legal doctrine and willing to release a potential criminal, she holds him in contempt of court and denies his bail. After giving his confession, Clyde demands a steak lunch from Del Frisco's and his iPod be delivered to his prison cell at 1:00 p.m. in exchange for the location of Darby's lawyer, Bill Reynolds, who was reported missing by his wife three days earlier. Nick agrees to the deal, but after missing Clyde's deadline, Reynolds is found buried alive with a precisely-timed oxygen device strapped to him. Simultaneously, Clyde kills his cellmate and is subsequently moved to solitary confinement.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Kurt Wimmer
- Cinematography: Jonathan Sela
- Edited by: Tariq Anwar
- Music: Brian Tyler
- Production design: Alex Hajdu
- Produced by: Mark Gill, Alan Siegel, Gerard Butler, Kurt Wimmer
Cast
- Jamie Foxx as Nick Rice
- Gerard Butler as Clyde Alexander Shelton
- Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan
- Bruce McGill as Jonas Cantrell
- Leslie Bibb as Sarah Lowell
- Michael Irby as Detective Garza
- Gregory Itzin as Warden Iger
- Regina Hall as Kelly Rice
- Emerald-Angel Young as Denise Rice
- Brooke Stacy Mills as Clyde's Wife
Production
- Country: United Kingdom, United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: The Film Department, Evil Twins, Warp Films, Overture Films
- Budget: $53,000,000
- Box office: $127,900,000
- Themes: prison, assassin, philadelphia, pennsylvania, bomb, secret passage, deal, investigation, gore, torture, explosion
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