Death Sentence

August 31st, 2007 by James Cook | Source:

Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Ian Jeffers. Based on the novel by Brian Garfield.
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Kelly Preston, Jordan Garrett, Stuart Lafferty, Aisha Tyler, Garrett Hedlund, John Goodman

Score: 6/10

I wasn’t really all that excited about Death Sentence, but like a lot of movies this summer after I saw the trailer I became a lot more excited to see the movie. I’m not the biggest Kevin Bacon fan nor am I really a fan of director James Wan, whose first outing, Saw was pretty overrated in my opinion.

The movie opens like many vigilante/revenge flicks do. It introduces us to a loving family man and the main protagonist for the story. Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is that man; he seems to have the perfect life with great kids and a loving wife. One night while stopping for gas on his way back from his oldest son’s hockey game something terrible happens. His son is killed in what police describe as an initiation killing for a local gang. Nick can identify the man responsible, but because he is the only one that saw anything the killer will only get three years in jail. Part of a plea bargain from the D.A. Nick refuses to let this happen and doesn’t testify as a result the man goes free. Nick takes matters into his own hands and tracks down the man and kills him.

This all happens in about the first ten minutes of the movie, which was good. It doesn’t get bogged down with any moral crap. Nick makes a decision and rolls with it. Unfortunately for him he’s decided to go against the wrong people and ended up killing the brother of the gang leader.

The gang tracks him down and it leads to the best sequence in the entire movie. I was kind of enjoying the movie up until this point, but this scene had me really glued to the screen. The gang is chasing Nick through downtown streets trying to kill him, and it’s a really great chase scene. All on foot. They end up in a parking garage where the action really picks up. There is some really great hand-to-hand combat in this movie that I wasn’t really expecting. This was an awesome scene and it was really well directed, it’s just too bad that the rest of the movie never measure’s up to it.

One thing that halts any momentum is Aisha Tyler. She gives one of the worst performances of the year. She plays the detective who kind of knows what Nick is doing. Every so often she’ll come on screen and warn him of the people he’s involved with, it’s so lame and clichéd it’s not even funny. Right now she’s tied for worst detective ever – along with Demi Moore in Mr. Brooks. Please just go back to hosting The 5th Wheel and stay off the big screen. There’s also a really strange cameo by John Goodman, where they try and give some weird back-story to the gang leader. It doesn’t work at all and shouldn’t have been cut out entirely.

Early on when the movie focuses on Kevin Bacon’s character trying to take matters into his own hands it really works. The main problem though is that there’s only so much of that, the rest of time he’s trying to deal with a grieving wife and a kid who thinks he doesn’t love him enough, and in a movie called Death Sentence it just comes off as really cheesy and lame.

The last major flaw the movie has is the turning point for Kevin Bacon’s character about half way through the movie. Something happens and it totally changes the dynamic of his character, and he goes from this scarred business man trying to deal with the shit hitting the fan into full on vigilante super hero. It turns into The Punisher. Its really unfortunate because with the way the story was going it could have been a way better movie. Instead it’s completely derailed.

Overall, while there were a few scenes that I really enjoyed in Death Sentence, the rest of the movie is surrounded by scenes that just don’t work. Kevin Bacon turns in a decent performance but he’s about the only one.