GRADE: B-

This workmanlike attempt at breathing life into the standard revenge thriller is a mostly successful enterprise, although “Law Abiding Citizen” does eventually revert back to the formula’s most obvious conventions when it’s all said and done despite a terrific, if implausible, climax.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a conventional approach, but director F. Gary Gray’s intention to convert this over zealous suspenser into something of a political message picture promises more than it delivers, and the film’s lack of focus—its failure to settle on a consistent narrative point of view—is responsible for the distortion.

By contrast, 2008’s “Taken,” a straightforward revenge flick, might have been less tangled and socially relevant than “Law Abiding Citizen,” but its plotline was concise and laser-like in its determination to follow the genre’s rules. By dispensing with any pretense of social-mindedness and concentrating on the task at hand it was able to achieve far better results, particularly as entertainment.

That doesn’t mean a revenge film can’t be any good unless it focuses only on revenge. But if you’re attempting to extend the genre—as Gray and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer are in “Law Abiding Citizen,” the story needs to morph into its next phase and then stay there, or at least while its there exhibit a distinguishable narrative direction. As it stands, “Law Abiding Citizen” flip-flops all over the place—first it’s a revenge film, then it’s a message movie, then a whodunit—without ever congealing into a larger whole.

Still, Gray and Wimmer deserve praise for their efforts, and the film does have a certain air of mystery and intrigue, qualities films like “Taken” definitely lack, what with their suspense limited to figuring out who’s going to be killed and how the deed will be done.

The basic story in “Law Abiding Citizen” is simple enough: a man (Gerald Butler of “300” fame), whose wife and daughter were raped and killed during a home invasion survives the affair only to find that the assistant district attorney (Jamie Foxx—not at his best) has cut a plea deal with one of the two assailants.

That deal, which results in the death penalty for one of them and a five year prison sentence for the other, doesn’t sit well with the surviving husband, who eventually sets in motion an elaborate plan to make everyone involved with the case pay the ultimate price. Soon that lands him in jail, but that doesn’t stop the killings.

How he orchestrates these revenge killings from behind bars, whether or not he has an accomplice, and what his ultimate goals are remain the points of interest in this nicely-paced exercise, one that thankfully shows some degree of visceral and visual restraint, although the film has little difficulty earning its R-rating.

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