Law of vengeance

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Movie
German title Law of vengeance
Original title Law Abiding Citizen
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2009
length 109 minutes, 119 (Director's cut) minutes
Age rating FSK 16, 18 (Director's cut)
JMK 16
Rod
Director F. Gary Gray
script Kurt Wimmer
production Alan Siegel
Gerard Butler
Lucas Foster
Mark Gill
Robert Katz ,
Kurt Wimmer
music Brian Tyler
camera Jonathan Sela
cut Tariq Anwar
occupation

Law of Vengeance is an American feature film that was made in 2009 and directed by F. Gary Gray . The main roles were played by Gerard Butler and Oscar winner Jamie Foxx . The film opened in German cinemas on November 19, 2009.

action

Philadelphia , Pennsylvania : Clyde Shelton lives a normal, middle-class life until one day he is bound and gagged to watch his wife and daughter be brutally murdered in a robbery. The perpetrators are Rupert Ames and Clarence Darby, with Darby committing the murders himself. The perpetrators are caught soon after, and ambitious prosecutor Nick Rice takes over the case. He makes a deal with Clarence Darby, one of the perpetrators, that means that Darby only serves three years in prison while his accomplice Rupert Ames is sentenced to death. Shelton watches Prosecutor Darby shake hands at a press conference after the trial, but fails to realize that he is reluctant to do so for the press.

Ten years passed before the execution of the death penalty by lethal injection . Rice attends the execution of Ames with his assistant Sarah Lowell. But Ames does not die quickly and painlessly as usual. The three ampoules of liquids that are being injected into the convict one after the other had been exchanged, so that the victim must go through immense agony. The police first suspect Darby, who has been free for seven years, and drive to his apartment to arrest him. Shortly before the authorities arrive, he is warned by a phone call from Shelton, as it turns out later. Darby escapes, but is lured into a trap by Shelton, drugged with tetrodotoxin , and brutally murdered while a camera records everything. Since the property where Darby was killed belongs to Shelton, Rice has him arrested. A short time later, Rice's family received a DVD in the mail showing Darby's brutal murder.

Meanwhile, Shelton is interrogated by Rice, but plays cat and mouse with him by admitting a general killing intention to Darby and Ames, but in such a way that it cannot be recognized as evidence. However, he promises Rice a real confession if he gets him a comfortable bed for his cell in return. Rice, who initially does not take the offer seriously and therefore declines, is persuaded by his boss Cantrell to accept the deal. In the meantime, Shelton applies for his bail release , which, to Rice's horror, is almost granted by the same judge who agreed to the deal with Darby. But Shelton deliberately spoils it with her by insulting her, because he just wanted to make her understand how negligent the judicial system is acting by obviously also setting murderers frivolous. The judge then refuses Shelton's release on bail and Rice finally makes a real confession that he had promised him in exchange for his new bed.

Rice, who now considers the case closed and wants to leave the interrogation room, is stopped by Shelton by offering Rice another confession and implying that Darby's former attorney, Billy Reynolds, is in dire danger and only him Another deal with Rice could save, which would consist of a porterhouse steak with green asparagus from Steakhouse Del Frisco's, which should be delivered punctually at one o'clock noon. In addition, he insists on his iPod , as he wants music with the meal. When Rice realizes that Shelton's threat was not a bluff and the lawyer has actually disappeared, he agrees to the deal. However, since the catering service is eight minutes late because the director of the detention center, who does not want Shelton to dictate anything, deliberately checks the food a second time, the police get the coordinates of the location where Reynolds is from Shelton. but can only recover his corpse. Shelton had Reynolds handcuffed and buried in a box and fitted with a ventilator, which switched off at 1:15 p.m. sharp. At the same time Shelton murdered his cellmates by repeatedly ramming him a gnawed bone steak in the neck and then promptly in solitary confinement is laid in the basement of the prison. A process precisely calculated by Shelton, as we learn later.

Rice and Attorney General Jonas Cantrell meet with an intelligence officer who explains to them that Shelton is a specialist in killing people when they are not around, and that because of his skills, Shelton has been used by the intelligence agency from time to time. When the two go to see the judge who sentenced Darby so mildly and who almost bailed Shelton free, they try to persuade her to ignore Shelton's civil rights by maintaining the solitary confinement he is in beyond the time limit in order to avoid endangering other people. After some consideration, she agrees to this plan, but dies only a moment later from her own mobile phone manipulated by Shelton, which explodes on her head. When Rice went to Shelton again, he asked for his release by 6 a.m., otherwise, he threatens, everyone would die. Rice suspects that Shelton has a helper among the prison inmates and orders all the prosecutor responsible for the case to the prison, because the time is too short to move the files to be viewed from the prison. But when nothing happens at the said time, he lets everyone go home. Finally, in the parking lot, the investigators 'vehicles explode when the first vehicle passes the prison gate, triggering explosive devices that were hidden in the vehicles' tanks. Six people died in the detonations, including Rice's colleague Lowell. Rice and Cantrell are then summoned to Philadelphia City Hall by Mayor April Henry and reprimanded for their disastrous investigative work. Rice insists that no one will be harmed by Shelton.

After the burial of the victims of the bomb attacks, which takes place under high security measures, like Rice and Cantrell, who sit in various vehicles, leave the cemetery as the car of Cantrell of a converted Shelton demining robot with EMP , machine gun and rocket launcher is equipped , is first shot at and then blown up. None of the inmates survived. Rice is then summoned again by the mayor, who tells him that she should actually fire him immediately. Rice wants to forestall this and in turn offers to resign, which the mayoress refuses to accept. Instead, she promoted him to the senior district attorney on a fast-track and declares a state of emergency for the city of Philadelphia.

Rice recalls that shortly before her violent death, Lowell spoke of an ominous friend who could help her track down the locations of several properties that Shelton bought through bogus companies after the murder of his family, due to those outside the United States Authorities in each case stonewalled to disclose the necessary information. While he was sitting at Lowell's computer, her friend received an e-mail stating that he and Detective Dunnigan had this information, and when they found out from a map that one of the buildings was in the immediate vicinity of the prison where Shelton was being held, a suspicion matures in him. When they take a closer look at the building, a garage, they discover to their amazement a tunnel that Shelton has dug over years of work, which leads under the prison wall to the solitary cell in which Shelton is located. That way he could get in and out of prison and commit all the murders without anyone noticing.

In the meantime, Mayor Henry has called a meeting on the sixth floor of City Hall for briefing. Shelton, disguised as a cleaner, enters the building unrecognized and thus passes through the security checkpoint. He hides a napalm- based explosive device just below the room where the meeting is supposed to take place. However, Rice and his colleagues discovered the explosive device in good time and discovered that it was connected to a cell phone. 30 seconds after Shelton dials the number, the suitcase bomb would explode and destroy several floors of the building. Shelton is now on the way to his isolation cell, where he is already expected by Rice. Trying to persuade him not to detonate the bomb, he tells him "the decision will haunt him for the rest of his life." However, Shelton is stubborn and does not understand the ambiguity of this metaphor . He dials the number of the cell phone that is supposed to detonate the bomb. Rice then locks Shelton's cell and leaves the cell block shortly before Shelton discovers the chained suitcase bomb under his bed that was supposed to kill the mayor and her staff. Shelton sits down on the bed and looks at a bracelet, a keepsake of his daughter, while the flames of the napalm bomb spread around him. As Rice steps out of the building, one sees how flames shoot out of Shelton's cell, killing him.

The last scene shows Rice attending his daughter's performance, whose visit he had originally canceled due to the investigation.

background

Law of Vengeance was filmed in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . Filming began on January 21, 2009. The film was produced by The Film Department , Warp Film and Evil Twins (I) (co-production). The German distribution company is Constantin Film . The film premiered on September 23, 2009 at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York City . It opened in US cinemas on October 16, 2009, and was shown in Germany from November 19, 2009. More than half of the estimated US $ 40 million budget available for the film was returned to the US box office on the opening weekend, with revenues of over US $ 21 million. In total, over $ 73.3 million was raised in the USA.

In the scene where Rice is being sworn in by Mayor Henry , Michael Nutter , who was the incumbent mayor of Philadelphia at the time of filming , holds the Bible on which Rice swears his oath. In another cameo , the director F. Gary Gray can be seen in the scene in which he hands Garza the evidence bag after the execution . The coordinates (north 39 ° 57 '4 "west 75 ° 10' 22"), which Shelton cites as the whereabouts of the buried Reynolds alive , are the coordinates of the hotel in which the film crew stayed during the shooting. Gerard Butler was originally slated for the role of Rice , but took on the role of Shelton after Jamie Foxx asked to play the role of Rice. The interior shots of the prison scenes were taken in a prison that is still in operation. Therefore, for security reasons, the film crew had their equipment locked in cells when prisoners were shown through the cell wings provided for the shooting. For the scene in which Shelton orders the opulent menu in prison, F. Gary Gray's choice fell on Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse as the catering service, after he himself ate in the restaurant several times during the filming. In addition, the after-show party following the screening of the film at the local Philadelphia Film Festival on October 15, 2009 was also held at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse.

Reviews

TV feature film sums up that the “explosive story” manages without “psychologically coherent figure drawings”. The film is a "revenge thriller that falls apart towards the end".

The lexicon of the international film judges: "A cynical revenge thriller that pleases itself in extremes and uses its clumsy black and white drawing of an unjust society to celebrate the right to vigilante justice."

The editorial staff of Cinema is of the opinion that the film is an "effective revenge thriller, which unwinds its story too routinely and whose characters do not arouse any sympathy from the audience."

Sarah Seiters from the editorial staff of Focus is of the opinion: “The Scot butler not only plays one of the main roles in this revenge epic, but also produced the film with his recently founded company Evil Twins. "Law of Vengeance" is an action thriller that gains its dynamism less from exciting car chases and inflationary explosions, but rather from the head war between the two main characters. Since the director criticizes the legal system in the strongest possible way, but also rejects vigilante justice as a way out, you usually don't know exactly who to keep your fingers crossed for. This confuses on the one hand, but also gives the whole plot a special flavor, as the viewer cannot rest on a clear pro or contra position. Even if one or the other obviously wrong track is annoying towards the end and an additional twist at the end would have been desirable, "Law of Vengeance" is overall a gripping thriller that offers exciting entertainment. "

The editors of kino.de judge: “Everything is over the top here, from the action scenes that turn Philadelphia into a theater of war, to Jamie Foxx's over-sensitive performance as DA, who is emotionally on the side of the bad guy, but as the voice of Reason must fight him. Above all, the scenario is a license for Gerard Butler to transplant Leonidas from " 300 " into the present and to unleash hell on earth as a brilliant Spartan with joy in destruction. The fact that the plot is grotesque and the logic says goodbye after the exposure at the latest does not matter: "The Law of Vengeance" has already inflated itself so self-importantly that the audience applauds the one they should actually despise until the end credits: The film almost cleverly holds up a mirror to the viewer, a "funny game" in the style of Michael Bay . "

Nominations and Awards

Jamie Foxx was nominated for Best Actor and F. Gary Gray for Best Director at the Image Awards 2010 . In the same year, Law of Vengeance was nominated for best film in the action, adventure and thriller category at the Saturn Awards .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Law of Vengeance . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, October 2009 (PDF; test number: 120 194 K).
  2. ^ Certificate of Release for Law of Vengeance DC . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 120194-a / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  3. ↑ Age rating for Law of Vengeance . Youth Media Commission .
  4. ↑ Locations according to the Internet Movie Database
  5. ↑ a b c Budget and box office results according to the Internet Movie Database
  6. ↑ a b Participating companies according to the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ a b c Start dates according to the Internet Movie Database
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g Background information according to the Internet Movie Database
  9. ↑ TV feature film : film review
  10. ↑ Law of Vengeance. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ^ Cinema : film review
  12. ^ Film review , Focus Online , Sarah Seiters, November 18, 2009
  13. ^ Film review
  14. ↑ a b Nominations and awards according to the Internet Movie Database