Gerard Butler on the red carpetJennifer Bloc/Future Image/Cover Images
The action thriller genre is full of heroes who put their lives at risk for the greater good or personal vengeance. Recently, Keanu Reeves’ John Wickfranchise does it best, as our favorite ex-assassin goes on a rampage after his dog is killed. Features like Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper and A Working Man woo audiences with the trope and keep them in their seats with slick action.
Among such entertaining features is Gerard Butler’s Law Abiding Citizen. Directed by F. Gary Gray, whose works include The Fate of the Furious and The Italian Job, and written by Kurt Wimmer, scribe for action films like The Beekeeper, Point Break, and Salt. The movie follows an honorable family man, Clyde Shelton (Butler), whose wife and daughter are murdered in a home invasion. He hopes for justice, but a rising prosecutor named Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the killers in exchange for testimony.
The feature highlights the themes of friction between moral justice and legal procedure. It also cautions against the corrupting nature of vengeance as we see Butler’s character starting with sympathy but going on a full rampage and killing innocent people, which makes this movie extremely dark when compared to other entries in the genre. It was a modest success, earning $127.9 million at the box office against a budget of $53 million, although it got mixed reviews. It can be seen in the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score wherein critics awarded it 26% while the audience gave it a much higher score of 75%. No doubt the movie is proving a compelling rewatch on streaming as it keeps popping up on various streaming charts.
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Collider QuizWhatActionSeries WouldYouThriveIn?8 Questions · 4 FranchisesFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the professional with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to go down. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.The Four
Wick
Fast
Mission
Die Hard
Casting Has Been CompletedYour Franchise Is
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure,
people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and
probably headline it.
2014-2023John WickJohn Wick to Chapter 4Reasonable to the line. Immovable past it.
You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.Why You Would Thrive Here
The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honors
every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then
completely immovable past it.
Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels
and turning it into technique rather than noise.
People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do
the work.
The CodeNo Wasted MotionSay It Quietly
2001-2023Fast & FuriousThe Fast and the Furious to Fast XThe mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you’d drive through a building for any one of them.Why You Would Thrive Here
This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its real subject, because
loyalty scales and plot doesn’t have to.
You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend
it past the point of reason.
You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve,
an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
Found FamilyRide TogetherPhysics Optional
1996-2025Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible to The Final ReckoningYou have never once delegated the cliff.
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.Why You Would Thrive Here
This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the
rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that’s left.
You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an
administrative error.
You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure.
The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.
Over-PreparedOwn The RiskStill Running
1988-2013Die HardDie Hard to A Good Day to Die HardYou declined to be the person who let it happen.
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.Why You Would Thrive Here
Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outnumbered, out-planned,
battered, and extremely funny about it.
You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic,
and then it makes you unstoppable.
You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation,
and you’ve never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.
Wrong PlaceImprovisesStill Standing
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Law Abiding Citizen is Losing its Home
For fans who’d love to revisit the film, time is running out as Netflix is scrubbing Law Abiding Citizen from its digital streaming library at the end of the month. Butler seamlessly transforms from a man filled with grief to one who’s consumed with vengeance. Foxx effectively portrays a man slowly realizing his own complicity in a broken system. His smug confidence in the opening act transforms into genuine desperation and guilt as Clyde dismantles his life.
Check out Law Abiding Citizen on Netflix before it leaves the platform on November 30. Stay tuned to Collider for more such updates.
