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.

21 Grams review

 Number 536 on the top 1000 films of all time is Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's psychological drama '21 Grams.'

Told in a non-linear fashion, 21 Grams follows the relationship between three different characters: Paul Rivers, (Sean Penn) a mathematics professor with a fatal heart condition, a reformed convict Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) and Cristina Peck, (Naomi Watts) a recovering drug addict and housewife. After a fatal hit-and-run their lives intersect in ways they could never imagine.

The second in Inarritu's trilogy of death after Amores Perros. Similarly to what Tarantino does in Pulp Fiction, Inarritu plays around with time. The scenes don't play in chronological order which doesn't always make for the easiest of viewing. You have to work to truly follow and understand this film, but I would argue the work is worth it. Things start confusingly, but they do coalesce as the film progresses. 

We are thrown right into the action with different clips from our three central characters: Paul is on life support, Jack is giving a pep talk to another young offender and Cristina is at an NA meeting. Separate fragments that blend into a whole. Films like this can be off-putting to some viewers. It takes a lot of work to watch and understand non-linear films and this might be work that some people might not want to put in. Film is supposed to be a method of escape and how can you escape if you're constantly trying to figure out what is going on? I would argue that the similarly structured Citizen Kane is overrated. But that was because Kane himself was an uninteresting character. 

Whereas Paul, Jack and Cristina were very interesting to watch. All three were characters with troubled pasts just trying to do better. Paul is a downtrodden man distressed by his incurable heart condition, Jack is a former convict who has now found god and Cristina is recovering from her drug addition. They are all overcoming their personal demons and were easy to root for. The three lead actors did well in bringing their characters to life especially Benicio Del Toro and Watts. Both of them received Oscar nominations for their performances and rightly so.

While this film might not be for everyone, I would highly recommend giving it a go. It might end up surprising you.