And, doubtless, the same alarm bells will ring with the release of Law Abiding Citizen, a Hollywood thriller staring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, in which one wronged man decides to take on not just a couple of thugs but his city's entire corrupt, complacent legal establishment. Directed by F. Gary Gray, Law Abiding Citizen begins with what's now known as a "home invasion" during which Clyde Shelton (Butler) is forced to watch helplessly as his wife and daughter are murdered. One of the killers then cheats the death penalty after Shelton's ruthlessly self-serving lawyer (Foxx) cuts a deal. Disgusted to the point of psychosis, Shelton first hunts down the free man, then masterminds his grand assassination plan.

Along the way, having equipped himself with knowledge about every arcane detail of the legal process, he plays the system against itself. This is vigilantism deluxe. Shelton is not content simply to hunt his victims, Bronson-style, on their subway journey home: he uses mutilation, explosions and remote-controlled shoot-ups to bring the city to its knees. 

This is all farfetched — in fact, it threatens to spiral out of control long before the end. It is sometimes nauseatingly bloody, at other times plain silly, and no doubt it's all in the worst possible taste. What holds it together, however, and actually makes it compelling, are the scenes between Butler and Foxx, the former coming off occasionally like a blue-collar Hannibal Lecter, at other times like the Kevin Spacey character in David Fincher's superb Seven. Foxx is finally made to realise the very, very hard way that, in the words of the film, we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions. 

This sentiment, repeated a number of times, should certainly strike a chord with conservative viewers, if they can get over any distaste they might feel for the context. I imagine it will certainly rile liberal minds, not that they will need much prompting. Criticism of this particular genre brings out all their traditional prejudices. It is about the actions, albeit warped, of an individual against a system. It is about a crude, supposedly irrational emotion — revenge. The usual mantra is that such films are irresponsible and that they encourage lawlessness, views that not only show very little faith in the ability of the individual to make his/her own judgments but are disingenuous on another level. For the truth is that condemnation of these movies comes not from a sense of social responsibility but out of a simple liberal distaste for the whole idea of punishment.