Disclaimer: I hate Hollywood action movies, especially those featuring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx.
This movie epitomized everything wrong with Hollywood. A movie with a moral premise, an ethical precept it wished to convey; two "superstar" actors to help deliver audiences to preach said message; the complete and utter bastardization of the moral premise for three reasons. First, practically speaking, a movie like this sans excess blood and explosions is like a suddenly impotent 22 year old in the face of his first threesome. Second, Butler and Foxx are two beautiful and untalented to stoop to the level of depth necessary to convince the audience. Third, and endemic to Hollywood and its general politics, is the fact that morals are a convenient truth that look better at the beginning of the movie but become blurrier and blurrier as it goes on (Spoiler Alert).
Background: Two guys randomly(?) break into Butler's house. One of the rapes/kills his wife and ten(?) year old daughter. Jaime Foxx is an asst. DA who is trying to keep his 96% conviction rate up so as to become the future Philadelphia DA. The killer agrees to rat his friend out in return for Murder 3 (5 years in prison). Foxx's mentor tells him he can win the case in trial, but Foxx seeks the death penalty for one and the Murder 3 for the other. Butler does not understand and gets depressed/angry. Movie fast forwards ten years.
Was Butler a good guy or bad guy? The movie made him out to be the good guy, seeking substantive "justice" in the face of what our legal system dispenses as formal and procedural justice. Of course, he does randomly dispose of his cellmate in order to be transferred to solitary. But, I suppose this fit his character because the cellmate was likely "evil" and therefore a sacrificial lamb. But, by the end, Butler who was this brilliant assassin who was known for devising cool ways to kill people while being far away, made so many mistakes that it gradually became less and less realistic (not too mention that he bought land near the prison and spent ten years digging a hole from said property to each solitary cell and building doors in anticipation of his lockup and cell murder). The thing was, he was trying to teach us a lesson that justice cannot be considered justice if it is solely reliant on formal principles. Indeed, formal principles give the best chance of the law being applied equally across cases, but it is far from the Solomonic justice that human's and their neuroanatomy seem to demand. But, at the end, when Foxx (without his first name, doesn't his last name seem pornstar-esque?) foils his last plan to kill the mayor of Philly and a whole slew of Justice Dept. people, the lesson Foxx was supposed to learn...the lesson Butler spared him above all others (he killed everyone else remotely connected to his case) was...you might want to sit down for this: "I no longer make deals with murderers." Seriously!?! Are you kidding me? You just killed eight people, told Foxx you wanted the lesson to be "biblical," and now that Foxx understands this simple lesson you are content. As those flames slowly engulfed his beautiful face and the music/slo-mo highlighted your cheekbones, the audience realized it had been duped. Thanks Hollywood for giving us another example of your pseudo-social messages wrapped in nonsense.
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