Director F. Gary Gray's ("Be Cool") disappointing urban suspense potboiler shares the same unsalted narrative soup as Spike Lee's bone-headed "Inside Man," albeit with a dash of horror copped from the "Saw" franchise.
Philly detective Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) and his office are so busy negotiating with freshly jailed revenge killer Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) — he's out to teach the justice system a lesson that they barely get around to researching his the extent of his professional background.
Clyde was a top-secret engineer for the government whose wife and daughter were murdered before his eyes ten years earlier.
Try as the filmmakers might to create a sympathetic character out of Foxx's oxymoronic rule-breaking-but-honest investigator, Nick's hypocrisy runs as deep as Clyde's, or is it "Clive"?
There's some confusion about pronunciation of Clive's first and last names, and even more about an unintended disappearing pair of handcuffs that precedes a jail cell murder.
This is one continuity mistake that really does kick the willing suspension of disbelief out the window.
Gerard Butler's scene-chewing performance holds interest even as the story alternately melts and congeals like a mobile bowl of poorly mixed Jell-O.
Come to think of it, "Inside Man" might have even been half a letter grade better than this flop from screenwriter Kurt Wimmer.
Rated R. 108 mins.
