Death Sentence

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 31, 2007

Whatever happened to all of those badass vigilante movies, where one man is put on an island (figurative) alone against insurmountable odds and must fight for the honor of a dead family member/friend/partner? Where have all the great vigilantes like Chuck Norris and Steven Segal gone? Alright, nevermind. At this point you couldn’t possibly be taking me seriously. But then again, somehow I feel the same about Death Sentence, a serious revenge action romp starring Kevin Bacon.

From Saw director James Wan, Death Sentence tells the story of Nick (Bacon), an average suburban executive whose world is turned upside down when he and his son end up in the middle of a robbery on the wrong side of town. His son, an astute hockey player who wants to head off to Canada for college and chase his dream of making it to the pros, is brutally murdered at the hands of a newly initiated urban thug. Left with his wife (Kelly Preston), his youngest son and the grief of the loss, Nick ultimately snaps and seeks out revenge. In doing so, he murders the thug who killed his son and incurs the wrath of his even more dangerous brother (Garrett Hedlund).

It would be safe to say that this turn of events would lead to an all out war between a suburban dad gone nuts and a tattooed gang of miscreants from the inner city. That is, if the story didn’t get bogged down with a series of long, over-the-top slow motion sequences of emotion. We get it, the guy’s son got killed and he feels bad that he sought retribution, but we really don’t need all the melodrama.

Another annoyance is director James Wan’s affection for the tracking shot, in which the camera moves back and forth seamlessly within a scene, whizzing the audience up and down and side to side like a twisted roller coaster. The over-stylized camera movements just add to a lackluster amount of character development, leaving us connected to the main character’s painful story for only about the first 30 minutes of the film.

There is some redemption toward the end though, particularly for fans of gratuitous violence. From the moment that Bacon’s Nick makes the decision that he is going to be a badass (and trust me, you will know the moment to which I am referring, it is blatantly obvious and supported by some serious “badass” rock music) it is easy to get lost in the carnage. Limbs get blown off, bad guys meet their ends in some creative ways and finally the tracking shots seem to work. Think the crack house scene in Bad Boys 2, only darker and with Kevin Bacon as the shaved headed hero.

But despite the fact that the film does come back around at the end and deliver the violence that the both the trailer and the reputation of the director promised us, Death Sentence is problematic in the worst ways. It is painfully stocked full of revenge movie cliches, it is at times a little too over-the-top and it either takes itself too seriously or not seriously enough; I can’t tell. Either way, unless you really have a hard-on for watching 15 cumulative minutes of a skinhead Kevin Bacon blowing the legs off of some inner city youth then you may want to pass on Death Sentence.

The Upside: We get all six degrees of Kevin Bacon’s badassness for about 15 minutes.

The Downside: We also get saddled with cliches, melodrama and some annoying camera work.

On the Side: Kevin Bacon is slated to play Jack Brennan in Ron Howard’s Nixon, which is scheduled for a 2008 release date.

Read more articles by Neil Miller