Starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler
The film, Law-abiding Citizen, is a prime example of the problems in the justice system in our society. The movie is about a loving husband and father who witnessed the torture and murder of his wife and daughter after two vicious criminals broke into his home. He takes the law into his own hands and systematically avenges his family’s death by taking down the criminals and the people involved in setting one of the killers free, one by one. I liked this movie because it reminds me of the inadequacies our current justice system. Director F. Gary Gray created the main character, Shelton (Gerard Butler), to take the law into his own hands, an act that many Americans only think about doing. One scene in the movie instantly grabbed my attention; it was during a court scene, during Shelton’s (Gerard Butler) hearing, Shelton (Gerard Butler) launches into a tirade against the judge. The Judge and he gets into a shouting match, about how the judge was about to set him free because he cited a few legal examples of why he should be set free. He demonstrates how the legal system will set a person free just because of some legal technicalities, even when it is clear and evident that the defendant committed the murders or crimes. The judicial system focuses more on moving on to the next case that upholding justice is lost. No one cares about what is right or wrong, they only care about the crossing of the T’s and the dotting of the I’s. There have been so many cases in which the defendant has gotten off because of a technicality, whether it is the police who forgot to read the defendant his or her rights or because of some red tape type of nonsense. If you have never seen this movie, you are missing something. Law-abiding Citizen really makes you think about how cases really are handled in our judicial system. I do think that the main character, Shelton, maybe took his revenge a little too far, but on the other hand, I can understand his anger.
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