Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Kevin Bacon
Kelly Preston
John Goodman
Garrett Hedlund
Directed By:
James Wan
DEATH SENTENCE was one of those Spike TV promoted movies a few years ago. While they have endorsed the odd good action movie in the past (THE EXPENDABLES, LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN, PRIEST), the Spike TV seal of approval often means that the viewer's experience will range somewhere in between bad to incredibad. They seem to think that male demographic accepts everything that has tits and/or guns in it. But since I'm close to be Kevin Bacon's number one fan in the universe (right after his mom and his girlfriend) and that it was free on T.V last Saturday, I couldn't resist the temptation of watching this hardboiled looking piece of cinema. But by doing so, I overlooked another important detail. It's directed by James Wan, who also directed the first film of the not-so-enthralling SAW series. The result is predictably a mess, but a so-bad-it's-good kind of mess. Who's responsible for that scarring piece of crap? James Wan? The novel writer Brian Garfield? (who also wrote DEATH WISH?) I'm not too sure, but I'll tell you one thing. This lives up to Spike TV's seal of crappiness.
The story is eerily similar to DEATH WISH and so is the execution. So bad that I actually looked up to see if both were inspired by the same novel, but they are separate titles. Nick Hume (Bacon) is the VP of an insurance company. He's a rather good guy and lives a dream life with his wife Helen (Preston) and his two sons, having only the problems that people with a dream life have (like having his jock son for favorite). One night when he comes back from Brandon's hockey game and discusses the possibility of sending him to Canada to pursue Brandon's dream, they stop in the crummiest gas station of the ghetto and Brandon finds the way of being the victim of a gang initiation within thirty seconds after he set foot outside the car. He gets his throat slashed, only to survive for hours and die at the hospital (yeah, I know). But that's only the first step towards the path of destruction for the zero-survival-skills family (also known as Hume family). When Nick learns the killer is only eligible to a three to five years stint, he decides to drop the charges and take his vengeance the old and dirty American way. Him and his piss poor surviving skills.
What's so funny about this movie is how so fucking serious it takes itself and yet, its really poor ideas to back everything up. Nick Hume is a laughable character and while his lack of survival instinct is supposed to make him look fragile and endearing, his lack of common sense doesn't. He declares war to a dangerous bunch of thugs and commits murders out of an emotional response and unlike any other human being who would take time to reflect and be frightened by his own actions, he acts even more recklessly and you guessed it, puts his family in greater danger. It's frustrating at first, but after a little while there's kind of a Benny-Hill'esque charm to it. Josie and I ran out of sympathy for Nick Hume very soon and laughed out loud for most of the second half of the movie. It's too bad, because despite that it's a little over-stylish, it's a spirited attempt at doing an old school hardboiled movie. There's none of that shaky cam "chaos cinema" bullshit style going on. James Wan overkilled a little bit, but not too much.
So yeah, Kevin Bacon's die hard approach to acting combined with this crazy, clunky character he was given to work with results in a pretty messy performance, but this should age strangely well. It's ridiculous enough to do so. I haven't read any Brian Garfield novels, but I think this strange alchemy might have been achieved through ridiculous writing and an honest, almost undying desire to turn these silly characters into something larger than life. DEATH SENTENCE isn't good cinema, but it's decent. It's not even a good story. It's one hell of a slapstick performance made by actors who had absolutely nothing to work with. It has the feeling of those seventies movies where the perched mic showed up three or four times and the extras made funny faces in the background. It's unacceptable as a professional product, it's silly and it tries to make death dark and sexy, but it has the charm of an amateur theater group performance. It's not something you want to rewatch, but it's a great movie to exercise your sense of humor to.
SCORE: 47%