Slashing The Seats

Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx team up for some credibility ruining violent nonsense.

While we try to give balanced reviews here at STS, fuck me this is nasty. While a bit of the old ultra-violence is to be expected in a revenge thriller, it needs to be handled carefully if you want to avoid your anti-hero becoming the villain. Here, Butler’s general blandness makes him difficult to root for, meaning he’s on thin ice from the get go, and his subsequent actions end up confusing who exactly your supposed to back.

Playing opposite Jamie Foxx’s odious ADA, things begin fairly black and white. While not the most Oscar-attracting actor in the world Butler does have the ability to imbue his habitual B-Movie roles with enough cod-gravitas to keep him afloat. Gamer and 300 cemented his action status, and his general beigeness actually works well playing an average Joe. One quick wife and baby murder later however, and all that’s out the window, Gerard’s Clyde Sheldon (Who thinks up these names?) spending the next decade amassing the resources to destroy the killers, Foxx and seemingly the entire city of Philadelphia.

While the story – such as it is – initially provides Sheldon with plenty of audience empathy, as his actions become more extreme things degenerate into an excuse to chop people up in a variety of Fianl Destination style murders that lack even surprise value, each large-print signposted for the exceptionally stupid viewer, and while the direction is efficient if workmanlike, the glee taken in slow-mo pans across the victims ultimately leaves you feeling in need of a shower.

Foxx provides effective backup, but his character is so irredeemably unlikeable that you have to wonder how he picks roles. For every Ray there’s a Stealth, and for every Soloist there’s this crap. Faced with multiple killings, his character takes it as an affront to his dignity rather than a threat to the citizenry, coming across as a right ratbag in the process. As the situation escalates things head downhill quickly, with lingering bone crunching and blood splattering that would make Punisher: WarZone crap it’s pants, such is the level of viscosity. Unfortunately these set pieces do little to advance the lot.

If we were feeling charitable this could be viewed as a subversion of the typical Hollywood Hero figure, but charity – along with mercy and believability – are in short supply throughout, leaving us with an overly nasty, grubby little thriller appealing to the lowest common denominator.

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