‘Law Abiding Citizen’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Craig Horlbeck

Key takeaways

• The group traces the vigilante-movie lineage from 1970s street-crime films like Death Wish and Walking Tall through Taken-style "this group wronged me" plots, arguing Law Abiding Citizen is a throwback because Gerard Butler's Clyde targets the entire justice system rather than one villain, giving the film unusually high stakes and body count.
• Everyone agrees the movie's biggest flaw is its ending: after 80 minutes of escalating, gleefully dark set pieces, the film chickens out by letting Jamie Foxx's Nick survive and reach his daughter's recital, a twist the hosts call unearned since Nick is never established as a good guy—Van calls him "one of the worst, most annoying characters I've ever watched in a movie this much."
• Bill floats an alternate ending theory: the film sets up Clyde's poison-laced tie earlier (it strangled a man in the tunnel), and the closing recital scene lingers suspiciously on Nick's tie, suggesting the filmmakers may have shot or considered a darker finish where Nick dies before softening it for test audiences.
• The hosts dissect Jamie Foxx's career arc, noting he followed his Ray Oscar and Collateral acclaim with mostly forgettable studio fare (Stealth, Valentine's Day, this film) and never converted his charisma into a defining franchise, unlike how ubiquitous he became as a talk-show and music personality instead.
• Gerard Butler originally read for Nick while Foxx was up for Clyde before Butler pushed to flip the casting, a decision the group agrees improved the film since Butler's "grizzled" screen presence suits the vigilante role better than a polished leading-man type.
• A running bit tallies absurd plot holes: Clyde spends a full decade digging elaborate, brick-lined tunnels under the prison while also working a janitorial day job, gets postmates-level home-invasion luck (his family was targeted specifically, yet he never suspects a setup), and somehow runs an untraceable command bunker from an isolation cell with no cameras ever installed to monitor him.

Notable moments

• Van recalls seeing it at the Arclight expecting a grounded thriller like Changing Lanes and instead getting instant, jaw-dropping brutality: "everyone in the theater, oh my God, what?"
• The prosecutor's plea-bargain explanation to the grieving husband is singled out as one of the most detestable scenes despite hard evidence; "It's not what you know, Clyde. It's what you can prove in court."
• The judge's death is praised as a horror-movie-level jump scare, landing seconds after she boasts "I'm a judge, I can do whatever the fuck I want."
• The cellmate murder reveal (Clyde ordered a steakhouse dinner specifically to fashion a bone shiv, not the spork viewers assume) gets flagged as a detail some rewatchers miss even after nine viewings.
• Butler himself confirmed in interviews that the cellmate kill scene was originally so graphic crew members reacted with shock and the ratings board forced cuts to avoid an NC-17.
• Butler reveals he actually graduated from Glasgow Law School and was a trainee solicitor before acting, which the hosts say explains his passion for the script.
• The hosts riff at length on a joke "hot take" that Gerard Butler should have been cast as James Bond instead of Daniel Craig, calling it "dazzling, dazzling putrid" but strangely fun to entertain.
• Ben's rapid-fire "should have never messed with this guy" ranking (Death Wish, Equalizer, Taken, First Blood, John Wick) puts John Wick at number one for 439 kills in seven months after his dog is killed.

Time saved: 1 hour, 35 minutes.