10 Movies They Didn't Know How To End

1. Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen is one of the finest guilty pleasure films of the last decade, a deliciously trashy thriller about a genius engineer, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), who seeks to avenge his murdered family by brutally killing both the perpetrators and those who failed him in the criminal justice system.

Think Death Wish but with more nifty gadgets and the Conservative outrage turned up to 11. This film is wild.

And though Shelton's vengeful behaviour quickly gets wildly out of hand, thanks to Butler's deliciously scenery-chewing performance, he's easily the most charismatic and likeable character in the entire film.

This makes the ending rather awkward, then, as Jamie Foxx's charisma vacuum of a "hero" Nick Rice, a lawyer concerned more with his win-loss record than actual justice, tricks Shelton by hiding his own bomb in his jail cell, killing him.

Given that the film made Shelton so easy to root for, even as he plans to blow up City Hall, having the arrogant tosspot lawyer outsmart him seems implausible at best and deeply unsatisfying at worst. The audience wanted Shelton to win, dammit.

Rumours have persisted in the decade since the film's release that Jamie Foxx forced the ending to be changed so that his character prevailed, though there's still no confirmation on that.

Given how much of an ass-pull the actual ending feels like, though, it's incredibly easy to believe.

Clearly, it should've ended with Shelton escaping jail and Rice making an earnest attempt to fix the legal system, with the fear of Shelton being ready to strike if he goes back to his corrupt ways.