Death Sentence (2007)

"Violent, vicious...very effective.  Hollywood.com
"Well-made, often intensely gripping genre piece.  Justin Chang, Variety

Editor's Note A white-collar revenge fantasy in the vein of DEATH WISH (and based on a novel by the same author, Brian Garfield), DEATH SENTENCE ponders the nature and limits of retribution, asking if murder can ever be justified. Director James Wan (SAW) delivers a high-end exploitation film, complete with a washed-out, grainy appearance and some startling violence, but with complex, thrilling action sequences. Kevin Bacon is Nick Hume, a successful businessman with two children and a lovely wife (Kelly Preston). While driving home from his older, college-bound son's hockey game, Nick must pull into a gas station in a tough part of town. When the boy goes into the store to buy a drink, his throat is slit during a bloody robbery attempt. Nick identifies the killer, but with him as the only witness, the case is unable to go to trial. Discovering that the murder was merely a gang initiation, Nick is pushed over the edge, taking on the deadly gang headed by the fierce Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund). Payback becomes all-encompassing for Nick: it not only takes over his life, but it also causes a startling physical transformation. Wan forgoes emotional impact in favor of souped-up, visceral, and occasionally thrilling setpieces. Bacon makes Nick's transformation from a suburban, suit-and-tie family man into a gaunt, shaved-headed angel of death startling and believable. Full of interesting contradictions, DEATH SENTENCE lets viewers have it both ways--fulfilling their bloodlust while ensuring that Nick's targets are despicable people who deserve their fates. Ultimately, though it serves to remind us that, as a solution, violence only begets more violence.

	Aisha Tyler
	Garrett Hedlund
	John Goodman
	Jordan Garrett
	Kelly Preston
	Kevin Bacon
	Leigh Whannell
	Stuart Lafferty
	Andrew Sugerman - Executive Producer
	Brian Garfield - Based On Novel By
	Charlie Clouser - Original Music By
	Howard Baldwin - Producer
	Ian Jeffers - Screenplay
	James Wan - Director
	John R. Leonetti - Cinematographer
	Julie Berghoff - Production Designer
	Michael N. Knue - Editor
	Rosa Palomo - Art Director

Reel.com 8 of 10
Thirty-three years ago, Charles Bronson made violent revenge fashionable when he took to the streets of New York to avenge a horrible crime in Death Wish, a thriller based on a Brian Garfield novel. It is back to those bad old ways with Death Sentence, also based on one of Garfield's books and directed by Saw's James Wan. Starring Kevin Bacon as a suburban white-collar dad pushed past the limits of reason, it is taut, visceral, and unapologetic in its brutality. It is an ugly movie, but then it has an ugly story to tell...Wan and screenwriter Ian Mackenzie Jeffers aim to evoke that horror of random violence visited on undeserving people. The film is well cast; Preston and the two young actors playing the Hume sons are likeable, while Goodman, Hedlund, and the other gangsters are appropriately despicable. As the drama's rattled, desperate, and increasingly merciless center, Bacon is excellent, vulnerable and scary at the same time. Logically, the story does not completely hold water (in fact, if the movie were a boat, it would sink), but Wan keeps the action moving and the suspense percolating, so that the gaps hardly matter. In living up to its title, Death Sentence is not exactly a fun time at the movies, but it is riveting. - Pam Grady