Death Sentence (2007)

Directed by: James Wan
Starring: Kevin Bacon

*

Uggghhhh.... It is without question much more difficult to review a poor movie than a good one. My excuse for seeing Death Sentence is as simple as a lack of options. Neflix were in the mail, no good games on and the director of the original Saw (a film I like and respect for its originality despite the crap it spawned) had another of his works showing on FX. I'm going to leave out the fact that I only watched about ten minutes and DVRed the rest to watch on a night when there would likely be an alternative... yeah, gonna leave that part out.

So the film stars Kevin Bacon as Nick Hume. He's a loving husband and father of two. He has the perfect life. Okay, enough of that. That's the film speaking not me. Before too long, Nick's oldest son Brendan, destined to become a great hockey player is senselessly murdered by a gang member at his initiation. While Nick's pumping gas and Brendan buying a slushy, the gang storms the gas station and blows away the attendant before the rookie cuts the Brendan's throat with a machete. But Nick gets a look at him as the rest of the gang drives off without him. Then he runs away and gets absolutely smashed by a car in the middle of the street... he's okay though. Just a few bruises.

This scene at the gas station, in addition to several of the action scenes are actually pretty decent scenes. The gritty and hand held style of film making that's used served them well. Unfortunately, everything in between is very stale. The efforts exerted into making some violent and raw action scenes did pay off for each scene in and of itself but the jarring mood swings we're exposed to anytime there's no real action is what makes this such a bad movie. Despite the overwhelming emotion displayed by the characters as music plays and the shot pulls away from the greiving family, the scene is emotionless. The films success in creating good scenes in turn became its failure in making a good movie. Its a bit of an oxymoron.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'll point out that everything about this movie wasn't as bad as it came across. The concept, while somewhat cliche and overused, actually managed to make itself known enough to recognize. The contrast between Nick's life prior to his son's death and how it turns is interesting. The unnecessary garbage that leads him down this path of destruction for everyone involved is what hurts the journey. Shades of Taxi Driver exist only in action and dare I say style. Strangely enough, Nick Hume had more motivation to go on his murderous rampage than did Travis Bickle but it only proves how a concept is only one small step in making a good movie.

There are a lot of things that would need to be taken away from this film before anything could even be added to make it good but its biggest problem is how bogged down it is with cliches. Of Nick's two sons, the golden boy son is the one who's murdered, not the younger one who gets in trouble in school. This would have been fine if we didn't have to have the overly dramatic argument between father and younger son when son comes right out and says "the wrong son must have died!" One dimensional characters like Nick's wife Helen (Kelly Preston) only increase the liklihood of laughter at what should be gut-wrenching or heartwarming scenes. She fails in every frame she's in. Its not completely her fault, but she needs to shoulder some of the blame for such a bad performance.

Performance critiques lead us to the appearance of John Goodman in this film. I don't know what else to say. There is a partial reveal of his purpose towards the end but the film's begging to have a deeper meaning at this point overshadows any chance of rational thought or acceptance. What Goodman's character did do is enforce the fact that this film didn't have any balance or consistency. At no point was it walking a straight structural line. At times, I admired the direction it went as it took no regards of an audience's feelings and was, dare I say, hauntingly realistic. However, I've seen far better gang-related realism as recently as the best film of 2009, Sin Nombre and while similar heartlessness might exist with these characters, that's about where the similarities end. On top of that, it seemed the minute I began to respect this film for being clever, it snatched it all away from me by revealing that this ruthless gang is so incompetant that they failed to kill two of the three people they shot point blank. The scary part is not that they shot three people point blank but that they aren't supposed to be incompetant. Billy Darley (Garret Hedlund) the gang leader is such a bad ass in fact that he just walks around with his gun while people are getting shot all around him. He is, afterall, bulletproof until he's face to face with our protagonist. How could a film like this work otherwise?

The joke I've made of this review is the exact joke that this movie is. I laughed endlessly at the stupid lines of dialogue, the unmotivated situations presented to any and every character and the sad, failed attempt to make this film something more than it was... or wasn't. It didn't even manage to be something on the surface. It is however, one of those movies that I can not say whole heartedly that you should skip. If you're in for a violent rampage combined with some good laughs, this could be a movie to check out after a few drinks. I, unfortunately, hadn't had enough drinks.