Analysis of Genre

Analysis of Genre

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) - Director, Roger Ebert.


Law Abiding Citizen is a film about a man whose wife and daughter are murdered in a horrific attack, he seeks revenge and dedicates his life to making the killers of his family a misery, however he does not only make the killers a target but the people who did not give the killers enough justice.


The film is a cross genre between, Crime and Thriller.


It provides the audience with the Binary Opposition of Good vs Evil, this is when he is determined to get revenge for the evil acts carried out on his wife and daughter.  This shown when he has Derby strapped to the table. This is signifying that he has waited a long time to get his revenge when he says ''Your heart is beating so fast. Mine too."


In the trailer there are many cut shots, an example of this is when he sees the killer of his family shaking hands with the man who was supposed to be bring justice to his family, we see him looking at them then it cuts to him walking away, then cuts again to where he is further away. the camera does not move, this may represent the distance he feels with the prosecutor, as he feels he has not brought enough justice, also just in this scene there numerous camera shots, these are medium close up and very long shot. When Clyde is duct taped across the mouth we have an extreme close up of his face, we see he is in pain and can only see his face, signifying that he is trapped and cannot do anything to help them. The music used in this trailer is of an epic style. It is very fast paced when the trailer is fast paced, but when something bad is about to happen it suddenly stops, this emphasises the action going on in the movie. The setting of the trailer varies, however mainly being set either in a court or prison. We know this as a lot of the people in the scenes are wearing suits, implying they are by means playing an important role. We also know it is set in a prison as Clyde’s uniform is a prison uniform, we do not have to be told he is in prison as we can clearly see in the background of some of the scenes metal bars, and security guards. Also in the scene where Nick is interrogating Clyde, we see the use of over the shoulder shots, it switches between the two as they speak so when Clyde speaks we see him over the shoulder of Nick and vice versa. The use of shot/reverse shot is also used as the relationship between nick and Clyde is building up to be bad. The final 3/4 of the trailer becomes very fast paced with lots of different scenes in a short period of time. This is called a montage. A montage is a good way of revealing a back story and also it shows the progression of the movie in a very short period of time, the montage ended also with 'epic' music. We see the use of voice over in the film, however the voice over is Gerard’s voice and is voiced over a scene for a few seconds, then it switches to the actual scene he is talking in. This is good as it can prepare us
for what we are going to see. The use of enigma codes is used in the film, when the trailer first starts, when we see Clyde first open the door and he hit over the head with a baseball bat and when he is tied, this makes us question, what has he done to be in that position?  An action code used in the film, is when Clyde first sees Nick shaking hand with derby, the action code is used as, as soon as he sees them the music stops and suddenly changes and slowly progressing faster and faster. 

Tom Kenyon.