“It’s not what you know, It’s what you can prove in court.”

When someone loses everything they have, they are capable of anything, no matter how horrible. The main character of A Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Sheldon, seeks to make an example out of the judicial system by breaking it down from within. Clyde watches as his wife and his young daughter are brutally tied up, beaten, raped and murdered while he is helplessly tied up by Clarence Darby and his accomplice Rupert Ames. When the case goes to trial, the prosecutor Nick Rice tells Clyde that since he blacked out during the robbery, his testimony will not hold up in court. So Nick makes a deal: Darby will testify against Ames stating that Ames committed the rapes and murders, and in return for his confession, Darby would face the minimum three years in prison for third degree murder and Ames would face the death penalty. When Clyde is informed of the deal, he feels helpless and betrayed by Nick, the prosecutor, and the entire judicial system. Clyde knows that it was Darby who committed the rapes and murders of his family, but when Clyde tries to explain his thoughts about it, Nick tells him, “It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove in court.” This then sets off ten years of planning on Clyde’s part to make the judicial system pay for its actions by systematically tearing it down piece by piece in a carefully planned attack. A Law Abiding Citizen breaks down the system right before our eyes, and it really shows all of the flaws and loopholes of our corrupt justice system and how well-known it is within.
A Law Abiding Citizen really makes us question the effectiveness of our judicial system and even our own ethical values. At times, the viewer can be happy and even excited to know that someone else is going to die in a well-planned and systematic approach made by Clyde. The movie shows the extreme flaws in our judicial system by exposing the flaws and loopholes that people take advantage of everyday. It is actually amazing how large the flaws are once they are exposed to us and we understand them. Since his case was basically nonexistent on technical terms, he made sure to use that against Nick, the prosecutor, and the entire Justice Department of Philadelphia. After Darby and Ames tied up him and his family, Darby whispers into his ear “You can’t fight fate.” before he stabbed him, causing Clyde to black out. Fast forward 10 years later, Clyde made Ames’ “painless” execution anything but painless by replacing chemicals meant for lethal execution with very serious and harmful ones. Then he captures Darby to extremely torture and dismember him, all the while capturing it on tape. This at first makes us think he is just some crazed murderer bent on revenge for his family. But we learn rather quickly that Clyde is anything but crazy. This character is extremely intelligent and very well-mannered. We would like to think of Clyde as a man who “speaks softly but carries a large stick”. No one was aware of his abilities. They thought he was just some Philadelphia engineer who had some serious bad luck. But Clyde is a lot more than some simple engineer. In the movie, they called him a genius, and he had a stint in the CIA black ops, which leads us to believe that this guy is a trained professional. Throughout the movie, though, no matter how dark and devastating the actions of what he’s doing are, he looks at the beaded bracelet his daughter was making him that night. The words “daddy” on it gives him the motivation to keep on pushing through with his actions. He uses this memory of his loving family to make sure the judicial system finally learns how corrupt and backwards their ways really are, no matter what the cost. Most people would assume a story like this would just show a character hell bent on vengeance and payback but this film and character go way deeper than that. The character does an amazing job of explaining that throughout the film. He always says