That leads to his arrest and imprisonment but it turns out that the guy is the western world’s most experienced assassin, and even from a jail cell he continues to wreak vengeance against everybody who messed up Darby’s prosecution-the judge (Annie Corley), Nick’s boss (Bruce McGill), Nick and his family (wife Regina Hall and daughter Emerald-Angel Young) and, as it turns out, the whole population of Philly.
Ten years later, Darby’s free on parole, but not for long, as Shelton orchestrates a scheme that allows him, in a sequence that could have been lifted from “Saw VI,” to dispose of the scumbag in a most brutal fashion. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) does a deal with Darby that gets him a mild sentence for testifying against his accomplice, who’s sent to death row. But his desire for justice is denied when ambitious assistant Philadelphia D.A.
Gerard Butler, who must enjoy imprisonment if this picture and “Gamer” are any indication, plays Clyde Shelton, the fellow who, in an ugly prologue, is forced to watch as a loathsome housebreaker (Christian Stolte’s Clarence Darby) rapes and kills his wife and kid. But amazingly, it gets ever more ridiculous as it proceeds, ending up as one of the silliest action yarns in years. Gary Gray’s extravagant “Death Wish” rip-off wasn’t ludicrous before that moment, it certainly becomes so then. There’s a point not far into “Law Abiding Citizen” when the brooding man planning vengeance against everyone responsible for the failure to secure justice against the villains who murdered his wife and daughter incapacitates one of the killers with what he helpfully identifies as a paralyzing agent isolated from the bile of a puffer fish.