Who’s the Bad Guy in “Law Abiding Citizen”?

“Law Abiding Citizen” opens with the premise pretty quickly: the violent break in and murder of Gerard Butler's family. Enter Jamie Foxx, the defense attorney who cuts a deal with the murderer, who lies in court. You see, the evidence was not enough to convict both burglars, but the "witness" of one of them against his partner in crime was. 10 years later, Butler sets in motion what seems at first to be revenge. However, once he's behind bars, he confesses that it's not revenge he's after but a desire to change the system. His motivation and cause are just: to try to fix a system that is imperfect and allows injustice to happen. It’s hard to think of Butler as the bad guy, because of the horrific way he had to watch his family die, and then watch the perpetrator go free.

However, did he have to kill people to make his point? Does an eye for an eye really solve problems? It was amazing how he revealed flaws of the justice system, how he successfully pleaded his case before a judge in his own murder trial for bail to be posted. His argument was sound, and had legal precedence even though it was known that he had systematically murdered his family's killer.

It was all a part of his plan. He wanted to show that the system was flawed and he wanted to fix it. Was there real change that happened as a result of Butler's mission of reformation? Did Jamie Foxx become an attorney that prosecuted criminals for what they had done, even though to lose would mean that the criminals would go free? For an attorney, it's risky to lose cases. However, the right thing to do is not always the profitable thing to do. Would Foxx be different next time he was in the court room? The movie does not address this.

Also, is Butler redeemed in the end? Does the movie end with him understanding forgiveness and peace? Does he reform a flawed system? Do his means justify the end? Was he the good guy, or the bad guy?

One thing he says in the beginning of the movie is that the justice system was supposed to right wrongs, it was supposed to allow the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose. However, a line of thought from the book "Disclosure" by Michael Crichton has a different point of view. In it an attorney says that the legal system was not about righting wrongs, or even mediating inequalities between two parties. Instead, the legal system is all about finding some kind of restitution, usually financial. "This person took this from me, so that person must make it up to me by paying me X amount of dollars, etc." Is that really what the legal system is now? Is the legal system about fixing injustice, or providing restitution?