Law-abiding citizen review

 Number 937 on the top 1000 films of all time is the action-thriller 'Law Abiding Citizen.'

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a family-man and former CIA operative. He witnesses his wife and daughter being murdered in a home-invasion by Clarence Derby (Christian Stolte.) When the justice system, including his lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) lets him down by cutting a deal with Derby ensuring his premature release, Clyde Shelton begins to take the law into his own hands.

Vigilante justice always makes for a good film. People fall through the justice system all the time either through corruption or incompetence. Men like Shelton are always sympathetic protagonists, not to mention their poor wives and daughters. They've been victims of horrific crimes. Their entire families have been killed. Nobody's going to miss their murderers. However, what makes vigilante thrillers so interesting is their quiet, intimate nature. Generally it's one man acting out of passion or retaliation with one gun or one knife. Maybe he does have a plan, but the plan isn't as elaborate as Law-Abiding Citizen.

And that's where this film falls down. It all becomes so ridiculous. I get that Shelton is some super-soldier, CIA operative, but are we supposed to believe that he's spent ten years digging into every solitary confinement cell in prison? That he's turned mobile phones into bombs? Or created a remote-operated machine-gun mount? I get him tracking down Derby and brutally torturing and killing him, but everything else is so ridiculous.

It also gave the film an overly, dark tone which made for an uncomfortable watch. Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx did the best with what they had, but neither character had any real depth to them. Rice is your typical man too busy to spend any time with his family while Shelton is a seemingly innocuous man with a psychopath bubbling beneath the surface.

This film is based on a good premise. Shame the execution was way too over-the-top.

300 review

 Number 513 on the top 1000 films of all time Zack Snyder's historical, action film '300.'

Based on the historical events, 300 follows King Leonidas (Gerald Butler) leading his 300 strong soldiers in battle against the Persian King-God Xerses (Rodrigo Santoro.) Fiercely outnumbered, Leonidas and his soldiers are determined to fight with everything they have.

300 strongly reminded me of a sword-and-sandals version of Braveheart. You had your dodgy history, your cheesy dialogue, your dodgy accents and plenty of blood and guts. However, what's important to remember that, first and foremost, 300 and Braveheart are films. They're films designed to entertain and not documentaries designed to inform. So it wouldn't really be fair to judge the films on their historical accuracy. Also 300 was inspired by Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. Just like Snyder, Miller embellished history to tell a better story. Snyder also utilised a special chroma key technique to represent the graphic novel's visual style. Granted the film isn't the most believable at times, it definitely isn't something to be taken seriously.

That notwithstanding, I do think you can legitimately criticise the film for its pacing. It was just so damn slow. Away from Leonidas, there are a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes between Lena Headley and Dominic West. And even though there were plenty lots of action/battle scenes which you would think would speed things up, this was immediately undermined by the gratuitous slow-motion. We saw some exciting action sequences that became boring when they were slowed down. There's only so many times we can see Leonidas or one of his generic minions cutting off a Persian's head or impaling them on a spear in slow-motion.

The cheesy dialogue did not do anything to help speed things up either. Just as it looks like things might get going, the plot is slowed down with some verbose, corny monologue. These monologues were mostly delivered by Gerard Butler in an attempt to psych up his troops. But he also had plenty of cheesy and unnecessary one-liners. Yet a lot of the dialogue was over-written. It could have been pared down immensely. 

The supporting cast were all very indistinguishable at all. I did struggle in telling who was who. Yes, they were all soldiers and dressed the same, but even so I think they could have been better characterised. Even though there were some famous faces like Michael Fassbender or David Wenham, it was hard to tell one Spartan from another.

Speaking of David Wenham, he plays Dillos - the only survivor of the attack and also the narrator of the film. I really feel like we could have done without the narration. At times, it did help to elucidate what was happening, but mostly, it seemed like a massive engine for exposition. And this constant, non-stop exposition killed the pacing time after time. Dillos was generally telling us things that we already knew or that we could infer from the context. It just wasn't necessary most of the time. 

Also the CGI was just awful. All of the backgrounds and the monsters looked so fake. I can only assume this was intentional, but I'm not sure why.

300 is an enjoyable enough film. Yes, it is cheesy, slow and historically inaccurate. But you have to remember it is only a film at the end of the day. Watch it for its entertainment factor and you won't be disappointed.