Finally watched Law Abiding Citizen
SO ANNOYED! would love to hear your thoughts.
Masterpiece… until the final 10 minutes ruin the entire movie. (SPOILERS)
Just finished watching and this movie was tracking to be an easy Top 10 thriller for me, and that garbage ending completely tanked it down to my Top 100.
The first 90 minutes are brilliant. Gerard Butler brings that "This is Sparta" energy. Even though he’s technically the antagonist and killing innocent people, the system failed his family so brutally you can’t help but side with him. He’s a tactical black ops genius manipulating the entire government from a solitary cell.
And then the ending happens. What the actual ffff?
The writers completely sidelined Clyde’s intelligence just to force a "good guys win" Hollywood ending.
You’re telling me a CIA level military engineer leaves a sloppy paper trail to Panama by accident? And worse, doesn't notice a massive suitcase bomb placed directly under his bed? No hidden cameras in his cell?
But the biggest plot hole that broke my brain - Nick Rice is a district attorney. He is a lawyer! He and the city cop have absolutely no business leading prison raids or disarming military grade explosives.
The second they touched that suitcase, Clyde’s anti-tamper triggers would have blown them to pieces.
The movie turns a bureaucrat into Batman.
Here is the ending we actually deserved:
Clyde knew he was going to die or go to death row anyway. He wanted them to find those sloppy Panama accounts. It was a deliberate breadcrumb trail to lead Nick to the City Hall bomb. Clyde would obviously anticipate Nick trying to bring the bomb back to the prison to trap him.
…So when Nick thinks he won, Clyde smiles, knowing the backup triggers are set to zero.
It should have been a murder-suicide. City Hall blows up, the prison blows up, the corrupt system gets completely leveled, and Clyde accepts his fate. It would have turned his whole war into a legendary, tell-tale sign that the system was totally helpless against him.
Instead, Hollywood pulled its punches, let the hypocritical system win, and ruined what should have been an all-time classic. End of rant.