Law Abiding Citizen
: The main character assuredly did not live up to the title, but if you are interested in a rather disturbing condemnation of the American legal system wherein lines become remarkably blurred, this is probably your movie… as long as you do not mind a not-quite-as-bad-as-No-Country-for-Old-Men-but-close ending to it.
Thanks for the warning. I’ve been interested in seeing this one, and was just waiting for it to come out on DVD and me to get around to it.
That being said, One week I watched 3:10 to Yuma, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood.
All of them I enjoyed THOROUGHLY until the VERY LAST SCENE. Then I wished I’d never wasted my time. “alls well that ends well” is VERY true for me. There are a few movies where the movie itself is fairly lame, but the ending is REALLY good, and I enjoy those, it doesn’t work the other way.
FYI the BOOK Three-Ten to Yuma by Elmore Leonard is VERY VERY good, and all of 70 pages with only the vaguest resemblance to the movie, tho the original ending very well COULD have been put in the film.
Really, the movie was not all that bad… and it certainly did not hurt that the main character had a definite Hannibal Lecter vibe, but with an overwhelming “I really want to sympathize with him, but cannot quite,” thing going on as well. Of course, it does not hurt that I really like Gerard Butler.
3:10′s ending was not that bad, or at least not as bad as NCfOM… It was hackneyed and more than a little unbelievable, but at least it put an interesting bow on the whole package, especially since the baddy had a definite “honor among thieves” thing going on (unrealistic as that may be). NCfOM’s ending, though, left me about as generally pissed off as the ending of the first Final Fantasy movie – in a, “You have got to be kidding me,” fashion.
I will have to pick up the book at some point, in addition to the original movie rendition, to see how those two compare as well.
Huh, I for one actually thought that LAC ended the only way it really could have (although I’ll admit that my inner anarchist got his hopes up for a bit near the end). NCfOM’s ending was lamer than a one legged orphan though. Also, does telling crippled orphan jokes mean I’m going to Hell?
Eh, it could have gone the way it was looking towards the end, and wrapped up with him getting his due another way. As it is, after a fashion, they just remolded another character into a pale reflection of Butler’s.
I literally had to rewind and rewatch NCfOM’s ending, just to ensure I did not somehow miss something… and then I wanted that additional chunk of my life back, after apparently wasting it all over again…