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I think Kevin Bacon signed a ‘Death Sentence’ when he chose to do this movie. I for one would like to see Bacon in better roles and movies than this. He’s got talent, but I don’t think he’s been in a notable film since Mystic River. I don’t put the blame on him for Death Sentence, that should be on director James Wan (Saw) and writer Ian Jeffers for a poorly written and executed film. The advertisers deserve more than just a slap-on-the-wrist as well. The slogan for the movie is ‘protect what’s yours’ but this isn’t about a normal guy protecting his family in extreme circumstances. If it were it would be a better movie. This is really just a B-movie revenge thriller that could have been titled The Punisher 2.

Bacon plays Nick Hume, a vice president for a major company who has the perfect loving family. His beautiful wife is played by Kelly Preston (Sky High) and he also has two sons: all-star hockey player Brendan (newcomer Stuart Lafferty) and younger son Lucas (Jordan Garret, who has appeared on numerous TV shows).

The Hume’s lives change forever one night as Nick is driving Brendan home from a hockey game. The two stop at a gas station which is held up by thugs. Unfortunately, Brendan gets his throat slit but Nick does get a good solid look at the guy who did it. The man is identified as Joe Darley and Nick finds out that the gang he witnessed wasn’t robbing the gas station but were holding an initiation ritual in which Joe had to prove his worth by killing a random guy, who happened to be Brendan.

Nick is the only witness and as his attorney put “you just happened to be at the only convenient store without an operational surveillance camera,” which is pretty convenient for the plot to move along. Nick knows he can’t put this guy away for the rest of his life so he has the charges dropped and he decides to kill Darley himself. This part is played all wrong by everyone as Nick goes into shock afterwards and yet he had such a smooth expression on his face when he told the judge he wasn’t sure if Darley was the killer, knowing he must have been planning to go through with vigilante justice. This is bad and irresponsible writing which leads to an over-the-top performance by Bacon.

Now the movie has been spun in an entirely different direction as Joe’s big brother Billy (Garret Hedlund, Georgia Rule) gets pissed off about his brother’s death and finds out that Nick was the one who did it. After an attempt on his life by Darley’s gang, Nick discovers that he has started a war and has put his family in danger. From here the movie looks like it’s going down an okay road but takes a sharp turn down disaster lane (with a surprisingly shocking scene) as Wan and Co. spin it into a ludicrous (and I’m talking The Punisher kind of ludicrous) bloodbath of a third act.

Amidst the disaster on screen, I saw the pieces to a good film here. Wan begins his film nicely and sets a tone reminiscent of better thrillers we’ve seen this year like The Lookout and The Invisible. I found myself thinking that this could be better than expected but that thought was flushed out of my brain in about ten minutes. Regrettably, Wan doesn’t sustain that tone throughout the entire picture. His film is riddled with cheesiness and ridiculousness, and not only is it literally and endlessly brutal, but it’s almost brutal to watch as well.

Despite a few cheesy scenes, Bacon does all he can but he’s got no one else to support him. Quality supporting actresses such as Kelly Preston and 24′s Aisha Tyler are dramatically underused and John Goodman is completely unbelievable and laughable as the arms and drug dealing father of the Darley brothers. Garret Hedlund is okay as Billy but like just about everyone else, his character suffers from a bad script. The only supporting character that gets the detail he deserves is Nick’s younger son Lucas, who grieves over his brother’s death and resents his father for holding Brendan higher than him.

This is writer Ian Jeffers first feature screenplay and it looks like it because the movie itself is nothing short of amateurish. What talent is in the cast is wasted. With a couple of suspense sequences, the movie was able to hold its ground through the first two thirds but it just stumbles and falls its way to a conclusion. The concept of a normal guy protecting his family in this situation is fine but then for some reason Jeffers started down this nasty road of a cliched and bloody revenge movie. Why he did that I may never understand.

The Upside: It’s never really boring.

The Downside: It’s never really believable.

On the Side: James Wan did not write or direct Saw IV, but he did seve as executive producer.