Man, I can’t figure out what Frank Darabont’s upcoming thriller “Law Abiding Citizen” is all about. What we do know for sure is that Gerard Butler will be the star, and now Jamie Foxx is in negotiations to star opposite him. The story’s original plot had Butler, playing a crusading D.A., fighting a criminal mastermind who, despite being locked away in prison, still manages to run the city from his cell. Now I’m hearing that Foxx will be playing a “traumatized” victim of the American justice system, who decides to become a vigilante and hatches a plot to get back at all the people who killed his wife and child when the justice system failed them. It could very well be that the two plots are entwined, but it sure doesn’t sound like it.

THR has more on the casting and “new” (?) plot:

Written by Kurt Wimmer and Darabont, the script follows a successful assistant D.A. (Butler) who finds himself at the center of a vigilante plot hatched by a traumatized victim of the legal system (Foxx). Foxx’s character is devastated to learn that, because of a plea bargain, one of his wife and daughter’s murderers will be set free. So he unleashes revenge on the killers and those who made the deal.

Kurt Wimmer is also the writer and director of “Equilibrium”, one of those movies that came out post-”Matrix”, and looked enough like “The Matrix” that people automatically wrote it off as a clone. I thought the film was very cool, and stands on its own. The whole gun-kata stuff was just brilliant.

What does that have to do with “Law Abiding Citizen”? Nothing, but “Equilibrium” was good enough that I am willing to throw out non sequiturs like it’s going out of business.

Below: A scene from “Equilibrium”. Just because.