Review: Death Sentence

All-American family’s idyllic existence (I mean, the family does include Kelly Preston for crying out loud) is rocked when Kevin Bacon’s kid (a promising young hockey player, of course) is murdered by a gang banger (Matthew O’Leary) during a gang initiation (these guys are all shaved-heads and tattoos, but aren’t skinheads, and are in fact, multi-racial). He’s arrested but rather than see him get scant jail time, Bacon would rather let him go (despite positively identifying him in a line-up), so he can dish out his own coldly-served form of revenge. Shave your head, pack some heat, it’s vigilante time! But can Bacon do what he must without losing great big chunks of himself? And has he opened up a whole can of worms that will only make matters worse for he and his beloved family? Preston plays Bacon’s increasingly worried wife, Aisha Tyler’s a cop who suspects Bacon of trying to solve things on his own, Garrett Hedlund plays the scummy ringleader, Aussie Leigh Whannell plays one of the thugs, and a seriously weird (Coen Brothers weird, I mean) John Goodman plays the mean old pappy of the ringleader, who just happens to be a loony firearms dealer.

This 2007 James Wan (yeah, the “Saw” guy) film clearly wants to be a “Death Wish” for the 00s, even more so than “The Brave One”. In fact, the film is based on a novel by Brian Garfield, which was a sequel to his “Death Wish”, which of course turned into the film of the same name. There was a film called “Death Wish II” with Charles Bronson, yet Garfield’s “Death Sentence” was not turned into that film. Instead, it has taken more than twenty years for someone to make a film of “Death Sentence”, and apparently this one’s not even that faithful to the source! It’s also an extremely schizophrenic film, though certainly a more honest one than the repulsive and pretentious “The Brave One” (the Jodie Foster film released around the same time as this). This one doesn’t try to intellectualise its vigilante situation, merely adding schmaltz to the violence. The result makes it a mixture of sappy and histrionic, but it’s a little more palatable than the aforementioned Neil Jordan disaster (or Denzel’s disgraceful “Man on Fire” for that matter).

The problem with this film can clearly be attributed to the ill fit of filmmaker and material. Schlock Aussie filmmaker Wan might seem like the perfect guy to make an exploitation vigilante film, but...“Death Sentence” doesn’t always seem to want to be an exploitation vigilante film. The film goes to great pains to present its main character and his initial situation as realistically as possible, but Wan and screenwriter Ian Mackenzie Jeffers give us only forced, smiley-faced, apple pie clichés (they actually show home movie footage of the family singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, I kid you not!) and the more obvious genre trappings, failing to give us a set-up that is either interesting or innovative. And given how damn many of these sorts of films are out there, this is a big frigging problem. Charlie Bronson made five “Death Wish” films alone! Wan and his screenwriter are clearly out of their depth in this film, unsure of how to handle the early happy scenes. Even Kevin Bacon is lost here, not quite convincing as an average dad. Playing a sleazoid child rapist in “Sleepers” and a molester in “The Woodsman”, makes it kinda hard to accept him in the role anyway, and his casting also exposes my long-held belief that ‘normal’ guys just aren’t believable as vigilantes anyway. Even in the latter, darker scenes (where Bacon is definitely more believable than Jodie Foster), the film doesn’t really offer us anything new to the genre, it’s actually kinda boring at times. The film, like “The Brave One”, seems to think it’s more innovative than it is, although this one goes the sentimental/entertainment route, which is far more palatable than the intellectual, snooty route of “The Brave One” (it’s hard not to compare here). In fact, this film is more like the original “Death Wish”- a straight down the line vigilante film aimed at entertaining rather than enlightening, but with a schmaltzy (button-pushing) centre full of clichés. I was kinda hoping Wan would simply give us a standard exploitation film, heavy on the exploitation, light on the schmaltz, and sadly, this film isn’t nearly schlocky enough for me. This film is more honest about what it is than “The Brave One”, but it’s just not much fun. Wan’s over-the-top filmic style (bordering on the hyper real at times), whilst it could’ve and should’ve suited this genre, badly clashes with the family drama material.

It takes a supremely nutty, hilarious turn by John Goodman to walk on screen, go completely bonkers and walk off with the entire film (by acting in a manner more relative to the filmmaking style than to the material being filmed). This guy is the only one who seems to know what this film was supposed to be. Sadly, he cannot save it (The normally annoyingly hyper Tyler, meanwhile, is strangely comatose).

I guess if you have to make a vigilante film, my advice is to either do it really well, or do it in a schlocky, exploitative, B-grade kind of way. This film is in neither category. Mind you, you could do a lot worse, there are those “Death Wish” sequels...

Rating: C