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Director: Gary Gray

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meany

The worst complaints I have about Law Abiding citizen are not the ridiculous plot or the tired, overdone evil genius character. The worst part of this project is that it has made alot of money and will encourage more crap to shoot out of Hollywood’s crap machine. Director Gary Gray has put out other weak action efforts like The Negotiator and The Italian Job remake where he wasted so much great talent that he should have been arrested for impersonating a filmmaker. Gerard Butler brings his considerable presence to the project and Foxx is solid enough.

Gerard Butler is Clyde Shelton, an ingenius inventor whose idyllic family-filled life is shattered when a couple of criminal misfits force their way into his home apparently for the main intention of killing everyone there and maybe grabbing a bit of jewellry. When they are caught, prosecutor nick Rice, played by Jamie Foxx, makes a plea bargain that allows the worst of the two criminals to be released in a mere ten years. It appears that Mr Shelton is a resourceful and patient man. He uses those then years to plan elaborate revenge on everyone he sees as being involved in this miscarriage of justice.

This film has found a following of non-discriminating viewers who will doubtlessly defend its glaring flaws with the “it’s only a movie” defense. It is only a movie. It is a bad movie that plays like Death Wish crossed with Saw. It’s unoriginal, over the top result is suitable viewing for fanas of the genre, but likely to be somewhere between nap-worthy and reactionary junk for others.

Director: David Ayer

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Chris Evans, Martha Higareda, Hugh Laurie, Cedric The Entertainer,

David Ayer, who wrote both Training Day and Dark Blue, is the director this time, for yet another film about police corruption. With an unconvincing script and Keanu Reeves and Chris Evans trying to carry roles like those handled by Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, this film was bound to be weaker…and it is. The plot starts out as rushed and convoluted, without proper character development, and becomes unraveled by the silly climax. There are some pretty good action scenes to keep you from thinking too much about the plot holes, however. That’s something.

Keanu Reeves is Tom Ludlow, a walking cliche. He is a smart-mouthed cop with an attitude and a drinking problem, hiding some past pain. Ludlow goes around finding particularly vile criminals (all minorities, but he tells us he isn’t racist) and killing them in shootouts that are then re-staged to look like good shoots, all with the backing of his boss, Jack Wander, and no one else. Internal affairs is a little curious about this and have turned his former partner into a snitch. The story gets silly when he is killed in a blatantly staged robbery while Tom is beside him. Instead of being relieved, Tom sets out to find the killers despite his own involvement and teams up with the investigator, Paul Diskant (Chris Evans from the Fantastic Four franchise). The action keeps up, but the ending lets down and should tell David Ayer he needs a new subject.

Street Kings is a bland cop buddy film that tries to fill plot holes with bullets, just as was done with Training Day, but with worse dialog and less compelling performers, this one goes down despite the hail of gunfire, leaving a corpse that will only interest die hard fans of the ailing cop/buddy genre.