In Theaters: Law Abiding Citizen

You get one darling exchange between Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) and his young daughter before all bloody hell breaks loose in Law Abiding Citizen, a vicious thriller that can barely wait for the opening titles to end before getting the shitshow on the road. Clyde thinks he's opening the door of his Philly home to the Fed Ex guy, or the delivery guy -- some kind of innocuous guy -- but instead he gets a bat to the face and a knife between his ribs. Two assailants kill his wife before his eyes; he passes out just as his daughter is hauled off for the same fate. It's a brutal opener, and the utter randomness of the violence is supposed to help fire our sympathy for Clyde to a high, vengeful flame. I wish director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job), had had a little more sympathy for the rest of us, particularly those just trying to finish their Fresca without choking.

Assigned to the double murder trial is Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a slick prosecutor with all the cashmere and satin trimmings. Nick also has a 96 percent conviction rate, something he doesn't want to sacrifice for a case that, for some totally unfathomable and hopefully not-at-all realistic reason, is not airtight, despite an eyewitness. Nick strikes a deal with the greater of the two evils, a grizzly ugg named Darby (Christian Stolte), who sells out his partner for a reduced sentence. If you, like me, have spent time recently reading Dominick Dunne's crushing 1984 piece on the light sentence served by his daughter's murderer (there was an eyewitness) or David Grann's devastating recent story in The New Yorker about the father wrongly put to death for murdering his three children, the look of disbelief and horror on Clyde's face as he watches his lawyer shake hands with the man who gutted his wife will resonate. The justice system is even more perverted than a three-way between O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Roman Polanski. Hold on to that moment, cherish it, because it's the last thing of any value this film has to offer.

Cut to 10 years later, because apparently that's how long it takes Nick to grow a dippy little chin beard, the only thing that distinguishes him from his former self. Clyde, understandably, is still hella pissed, and begins floating little bubbles of bloodlust all around Nick and the other participants in the trial. It begins with the killers, of course, and two death scenes that are so gruesome and effed up that I had to cover my eyes for, like, minute-long stretches, and now the backs of my hands aren't speaking to me.

Has the audience for these kinds of films demanded this sort of torture-porn titillation from their popcorn thrillers? Far from films like Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs, that walked and talked in darkness, creating both a convincing world of evil and a fascinating engagement with crime and punishment, Law Abiding Citizen springs its darkness on you in cheap, mean little karate chops. And while anyone who's been to traffic court will be howling at the screen over Clyde's early expressions of contempt for the law ("I bet you take it up the ass!" he hollers at the judge), the film's ostensible theme of moral correction to a whacked-out system slips away right around the time he whips out the circular saw.

There's no sizzle between Clyde and Nick because all Nick can seem to do in the face of Clyde's escalating retaliations (which keep coming even when he is incarcerated) is cock his head at yet another angle, as though a call just came in in the next room, hopefully from his agent. Butler, on the other hand, is freaking terrifying, if in a fairly standard way. It's a lame, limited role, but he makes the most of it, glowering and shanking with the best of them. This is clearly a fat budget affair, filled with random crane shots, glossy close-ups, lots of explosions and a galloping, string-heavy score. It whips along from that opening scene, and yet the lack of tension between the two leads -- until the very end, the one simply punks the other, over and over -- and the incoherence of Clyde's mission makes the frenetic pace, and especially the jarring violence, just seem tiresome.