Friday, January 22, 2010

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) movie

The trailers for this movie made me go "must-watch" and I managed to catch this movie after a bit of persuasion with a friend who would rather have caught Legion instead. I thought he would have insisted on Legion (as he got the tickets) and was pleasantly surprised that he had got tickets for the movie I wanted to watch instead.

The Slog Reviews: 8/10. There aren't any special effects to make this show a "must-watch" on the big screen and the story is straight forward enough - vigilante movies usually are. A pretty good synopsis of the movie can be found here. This story was a bit more interesting than the usual "kill those who hurt me" movies because the watcher is made to wonder how far Clyde Shelton would go and how he manages to engineer all the assasinations from where he is. Of course, the answers are revealed in the movie towards the end. I loved the bit where he yelled at the judge for granting him bail. That's part of one of the themes explored again and again in the movie about how easy it is to use the law to one's own means - the law becomes the justification for the decision rather than the reason for the decision. Which is pretty much reflective of how humans are like - we always think we have the reasons for our decisions but really, we often arrive at decision and later look for reasons to explain it. The book Blink which I have finished but am still procrastinating from writing about here explores this far more deeply. Ah yes, and the part about "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove" too also struck a cord in me. Blame it on evidence law in the final year of law school and the burden of proof to be proved in a criminal (beyond reasonable doubt) and civil (on the balance of probabilities) case.

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