Law Abiding Citizen

Taking the law into your own hands, frustrated by the deals and dilemmas necessitated by the nature of the legal system: it's pay back time. In F. Gary Gray's Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) refuses to accept the compromise which frees one of his wife (Brooke Mills) and daughter's (Ksenia Hulayev) killers (Christian Stolte as Clarence Darby) after only 5 years and strikes back with a full on blitzkrieg. His object of vengeance is principally lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) but his methods seek to "incarcerate" anyone associated with the original trial. His goal: teach Rice that you don't make deals with murderers. His methodology: take out anyone and everyone responsible. As a work of fiction, Law Abiding Citizen works well insofar as the ending champions an either/or legal system where the ambiguous dimension structuring day to day judicial decision making is severely criticized (and the either/or mentality is fictionalized). However, if it is stating that this either/or mentality should be adopted, then, from a more practical point of view, the ending becomes problematic. One way out of this predicament is to firmly interpret the ending as a situation where Shelton represents the subjective rogue, Rice, the objective standard. Rice can apply his objective standards generally aside from situations where he encounters the subjective rogue, situations wherein there is no compromise due to the designs of the rogue's ambitions. But if this dimension is being fictionalized then Gray supports a system where Rice can only apply his objective standards to situations where there is no compromise, thereby making the exception the universal and leading us back to the high and low imbroglio. Whether or not Shelton wanted Rice to kill him in the end is ambivalent as well: did Rice truly outsmart Shelton or was Shelton expecting Rice to outsmart him? Was he simply prepared for both options? Does this layer of ambivalence suggest that Gray is fictionalizing the ambiguous dimension of legal proceedings in order to applaud an objective either/or system which is subtly yet directly presented? Either it's an ambiguous ending or it's not, or perhaps the ending is both ambiguous and polar. You decide.

Gamer

Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine's Gamer synthesizes reality television and online gaming in a sadistic salute to mendicant masochism. Computer genius Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall [Six Feet under]) has created two billion dollar programs: Society and Slayers. Prime time participants have had nanites inserted into their brains in order to enable a third party to control their actions with hypersensitive virtual controllers. In Society, such participants live out the carnal fantasies of their masters for the benefit of their adoring public. In Slayers, death row inmates are given the chance to avoid the electric chair/ if they can survive 30 rounds of a bellicose bloodbath orchestrated within a simulated war zone. Running man Kable's (Gerard Butler) almost free, his controller Simon (Logan Lerman) a world renowned celebrity. But has Kable been framed by Castle for a crime he didn't commit and will an underground band of hackers be able to reunite him with his wife (and Society star) Angie (Amber Valletta), just in time for them to rescue their daughter?

It's all just a matter of time, depending on the ratings.

Gamer's a bit cheesily melodramatic and predictable but it's also entertaining and well executed (including a cameo from Star Trek's John De Lancie). It competently examines the age-old appetites versus intellect dynamic by creating a world where people ravenously devour realistic fantasies at the expense of the impoverished individuals forced to willingly yield their pride, while simultaneously championing methods of destabilizing this dominant discourse. There's also a scene which is so revolting that it ruined waffles for me (a sign of great directing). Taylor and Neveldine painstakingly point out that there are things that remain popular even though they're humiliating and that working class dignity is something for which people must fight. Their portrayal of the future resonates in the present and stands as a prominent warning against fascist social slayers.