Gerard Butler is coming hot off the success of How To Train Your Dragon. The actor brought his character Stoic from animated form to live-action and gave a stellar performance as the strict yet considerate father of Hiccup (Mason Thames). Butler has given us some memorable cinematic characters throughout his career, like 300, Den of Thieves, the Has Fallen franchise, and more. Now, one of his most underrated revenge thrillers is quietly destroying streaming competition.
Law Abiding Citizen is steadily climbing the Netflix streaming charts. The movie sits at number 5 in the top 10 list, next to popular features like Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, animated KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix original The Perfect Neighbor, and Goosebumps 2. 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.
Law Abiding Citizen is directed by F. Gary Gray, whose works include the likes of The Fate of the Furious and The Italian Job, from a script by the scribe Kurt Wimmer, whose credits include action films like The Beekeeper, Point Break, and Salt. The film 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 Rotten Tomatoes score of the movie, 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.
The cast provides plenty of compelling performances: Foxx as Nick Rice, Bruce McGill as Jonas Cantrell, Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan, Leslie Bibb as Sarah Lowell, and Regina Hall as Kelly Rice. Further rounding out the cast are Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin, Christian Stolte, Annie Corley, and Richard Portnow.
Gerard Butler Will Be Back for ‘Den of Thieves 3’
In the third installment in the Den of Thieves franchise, Butler will reprise his role of Big Nick. His co-star O’Shea Jackson Jr. previously teased that the movie might start filming in March next year. Writer/director Christian Gudegast previously told Collider, “Den 3 is all ready to go. It’s all outlined. I do notes, files, outlines, and when it’s time to do the script, it’s just basically changing the format, really. So it’s all outlined for the next two.”
Meanwhile, Law Abiding Citizen is streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more such updates.
Release Date
October 16, 2009
Runtime
109 minutes
Director
F. Gary Gray
Writers
Kurt Wimmer
Producers
Gerard Butler, Kurt Wimmer, Lucas Foster, Mark Gill, Alan Siegel
