Be honest: when was the last time you thought about “Law Abiding Citizen“? F. Gary Gray‘s modest actioner might be a rock-solid thriller – and the beginning of Gerard Butler‘s transformation into a B-movie icon – but the film hardly seemed poised to be reclaimed as an integral piece of the 2000s action canon. Until today, anyways. Now, with the news that “Law Abiding Citizen” is coming back with a big chunk of its original creative team intact, we might be in for the next stage in the Butler renaissance.
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In the original film, Butler plays Clyde Shelton, an everyman whose life is shattered when his family is killed at gunpoint. When prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) refuses to gamble on a failed prosecution, Shelton goes off the grid, only to return with a vengeance with a serious of coordinated attacks against the legal systems of the City of Philadelphia. The final product is a modern-style take on the mode of vigilante films that were popular in the 1980s.
According to Deadline, the original film was one of the most-watched titles on Netflix in December 2021, which — when paired with Butler’s continued dominance as a midbudget movie star in films like “Greenland” and “Den of Thieves” — could inspire visions of streaming dominance from the producers. Deadline is also reporting that Butler will return with his production company in tow and that the film’s original screenwriter Kurt Wimmer will handle the script.
If one were prone to bouts of nihilism, one might wonder why Hollywood studios are suddenly interested in a decade-old movie about an arms collector who uses a legal injustice to justify acts of domestic terrorism. Still. Speaking purely from an entertainment standpoint, Butler continues to carve out a delightfully grimy late-career arc for himself, and whether he is on-screen or not, a “Law Abiding Citizen” sequel feels right up his creative alley.