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LAW ABIDING CITIZEN Vigilante justice in real life is, to put it mildly, highly problematic, but when it comes to cinema, who doesn't occasionally feel some measure of catharsis in watching a sympathetic protagonist skirt around a deeply flawed legal system and exact his revenge on his own terms? Law Abiding Citizen initially appears as if it will be a modern rendition of the black-and-white Death Wish, as loving family man Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) must watch helplessly as his wife and little girl are murdered right in front of him. The killer (Christian Stolte) and his accomplice (Josh Stewart) are apprehended, but while Clyde wants them to pay for their crime, his lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), who's only interested in maintaining his high conviction-rate percentage, negotiates a deal. Cut to 10 years later, and Clyde sets out to get his revenge – not only on the criminals but also on the whole judicial system that failed them. Initially, Law Abiding Citizen makes all the right moves, and it's fun to watch Clyde punch holes in the whole manner in which this country handles its criminal cases. It soon becomes clear that the film is going past the simple morality of Death Wish, which is fine had it continued to offer viewers thought-provoking scenarios. Instead, this turns into an ugly, sordid affair, a gruesome melodrama that, too afraid to tackle the issues it brings up, instead elects to transform into a ridiculous thriller about a psychopath terrorizing a city. Foxx's character is ostensibly supposed to be the hero – or at least turn into one before the end – but Nick Rice remains a shallow, unrepentant lout whose final act is designed to earn audience approval but instead goes down about as easy as spoiled milk. By the end, the murdered wife and daughter are all but forgotten, and Clyde Shelton's pain has been trivialized to an offensive degree. Justice may be blind, but it's got 20/20 vision when compared to this movie that stumbles around in the dark with no hope of providing illumination. *1/2
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS Loopy enough to stand out from the homogenized pack but not bold enough to truly go the distance, this eccentric satire (inspired by Jon Ronson's nonfiction book of the same name) proves to be a modestly pleasing piffle in which journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor, sincere but straightjacketed by an undemanding role) searches for a great story on the outskirts of the Iraq War and finds one in Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Cassady claims to be a former super-soldier, a military man who had been trained in the ways of the paranormal in order to use psychic abilities to combat the enemy. Cassady and his fellow recruits flourished under the tutelage of Vietnam War vet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), but once a devious soldier named Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) entered the picture, everything went to hell. Now many years later, Cassady insists to Wilton that he's on a covert mission, and he drags the inquisitive yet uncomprehending reporter along with him. Clooney and Bridges are both adept at giving off-kilter performances (let's not forget that they've both headlined quirky Coen comedies), and they achieve the proper buzz in a picture that, until a protracted finale, gets high off the fumes of its own freewheeling inclinations. ***
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE "Kitchen sink realism" was the term invented to describe a specific type of artistic movement that took place in England in the 1950s and 1960s, and here comes Precious to borrow that expression for a more modern, decidedly Americanized look at life among the lower classes. Adding to the appropriateness of subletting that term is that fact that a good part of this harrowing drama is set in and around the kitchen, as a frying pan to the head and hairy pigs feet to the arteries both take a toll on the well-being of the story's heroine, 16-year-old Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe). Living with her hateful mother (Mo'Nique), a woman who abuses her in every way imaginable, Precious has to contend not only with a disastrous home life but also with the fact that she's pregnant with her second child, both kids the result of being raped by her own long-gone father. Grossly overweight and largely illiterate, Precious nevertheless harbors a poetic side and can only hope that her life will take a turn for the better. She finally finds some allies in a patient teacher (Paula Patton) and a no-nonsense social worker (Mariah Carey, surprisingly effective), but their encouragement repeatedly gets negated by her mother's assertions that she's ugly, unloved and unwanted. The 2009 release least likely to be mistaken for the "feel-good movie of the year," Precious is for most of its running time so pessimistic that it threatens to hammer viewers into a fetal position from which they may never emerge. Yet it's this hard-edged honesty – a far cry from the chipper, meaningless platitudes on view in many other works – that earns this film its stripes. Yet its key ingredient is Sidibe, whose excellent performance crucially transforms Precious from a character to be pitied into a person to be admired. ***