Law Abiding Citizen, a blunt and sadistic revenge thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, occasionally pauses from the mayhem to stage a solemn debate about law, justice and morality. Butler, playing a family man whose wife and daughter were murdered by thugs, feels he was let down by the system, which gave one of the thugs a light sentence in exchange for testimony against the other thug, who was sentenced to death. Foxx, the prosecutor who made that deal, thinks that the system, however imperfect, did its job.
But really, Law Abiding Citizen has about as much to say about real-life legal issues as Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen had to say about defense policy. And it has less ethical gravity than any three of the Saw movies. Though it sometimes puts on a serious face, this movie, directed with snarling, snappish style by F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job), wears its preposterousness with a certain pride. It’s about the cat-and-mouse game between two very smart guys, and it’s perfectly happy to be as dumb as it wants.
Nick Rice, Foxx’s character, is slick and ambitious, proud of his 96 percent conviction rate and quite sure that he’s the cleverest and coolest person in the room. This does not seem like much of a stretch for Foxx, who is cashing in on his Oscar rather than going after a second one. Butler, for his part, displays a surliness that many in Hollywood seem to mistake for charisma, and suffers the anguish of violent bereavement as if it were an annoying gastrointestinal ailment.
His character, Clyde Shelton, returns 10 years after the death of his family to tie up some loose ends. He dispatches the thugs, willingly goes to prison and starts doing dinner theater Hannibal Lecter for Foxx’s benefit. “Some lessons must be learned in blood,” Clyde declares, one of many portentous proverbs that he seems to have learned during his career as a military killing-gizmo specialist.
The details of his job history are revealed, during a secret meeting in a tunnel somewhere, late in the movie. But don’t think I’ve spoiled anything. By the time I saw Law Abiding Citizen, I had already seen the trailer four or five times. Another 40 viewings would have added up to the running time of the whole film, without much loss of pleasure or nuance.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Most of the fun in the feature-length Law Abiding Citizen comes not from the cleverly rigged explosions and bloodlettings — including one unleashed by a robot in a cemetery — but rather from the game and gifted supporting cast, who are not featured in the two-minute trailer version.
Colm Meaney, Leslie Bibb and Bruce McGill are all much better than they need to be, as is Viola Davis in a few scenes as the mayor of Philadelphia, where this bloodbath takes place. You can’t help regretting that some of their characters will meet fiery or bloody ends. On the other hand, the actors were no doubt paid well for their suffering.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless