Scottish actor Gerard Butler plays engineer Clyde Shelton whose wife and daughter are murdered in a random home invasion. The criminals, Clarence Darby (Christian Stolte) and Rupert Ames (Josh Stewart) are caught but only one of them gets the death penalty. The other one gets just a few years in a plea deal that the prosecutor set up. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is the prosecutor on the fast track to the D.A.'s office and doesn't want to upset his 96% conviction rate with a case that he is not certain to win. Needless to say, Shelton is not happy.
Fast forward ten years later and one of the criminals is executed and the other turns up in a gruesome way. Shelton is arrested and it seems that we should applaud his efforts instead of condemning them because of what happened to his family, but after he is jailed he begins to threaten that more people will die and the targets become more innocent. The audience view of Shelton begins to make him look more like a criminal as Price's colleagues and more innocent people die before his eyes. Shelton is always 12 steps ahead of the authorities and it is interesting to see how everything unfolds. The big question is how are Shelton's murders still being committed even as he sits in prison?
This film has some gory, unexpected and inventive ways of killing (some of the items used looked like they were borrowed from the prop room at "Saw") and had some interesting plot twists. Butler gives a good performance as the tortured husband and father out to show everyone the injustice of the event.
A lot of critics didn't like this movie, but it kept me interested although I had to turn away from some of the gore (Kind of wimpy, I know).
108 minutes I give this film TWO AND THREE QUARTERS STARS.
Rated R
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