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Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) likes things to be carefully ordered. The mild-mannered risk assessment manager tends to play it safe, always trying to keep things balanced. But when Nick’s oldest son, Brendan (Stuart Lafferty), is killed in a random gang initiation killing, the old Nick gradually dies with him.
When he realizes that there’s no way he’ll be able to put his son’s killer away for life—that all he can hope for is a three-to-five-year deal—Nick decides to take matters into his own hands. After he gets his revenge, though, the gang figures out that he’s responsible, and the gang’s leader, Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund) begins plotting his own revenge.
Meanwhile, Nick’s wife, Helen (Kelly Preston), and their younger son, Lucas (Jordan Garrett), fail to notice Nick’s transformation (or the fact that he comes home every night with more cuts and bruises). And Nick fails to realize that, in trying to defend his family, he’s started a war that’s put them in even more danger.
Death Sentence is one of those movies that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a heavy drama? Is it a gruesome shoot-‘em-up thriller? Is it perhaps a horror-comedy?
Or maybe it’s just an overdone B-movie.
Especially in the beginning, Death Sentence is a painfully over-the-top drama. It’s sappy and overdone, and the acting is just plain bad. And, worst of all, there’s just way too much drama. I realize that all the emotional, tear-stained scenes are supposed to make the audience feel bad for Nick—so they’ll cheer for him when he heads out to get his revenge. But, really, that’s beside the point in a movie like Death Sentence. If you’re going to go out to see a movie that involves exploding body parts and spattering blood, do you really care about strong characterization? Do you really want to feel sad? Do you really care if he’s justified in blowing the crap out of a gang of half-witted tattooed punks? Not so much. You just want him to get on with it already. After all, real action movie men don’t get sad; they get mad. And then they get even. Stop sitting around sobbing. Stop having long, slow, teary conversations with your son. Just give him a fatherly pat on the back, then go out and blow some stuff up.
But then comes Nick’s weird transformation—from mild-mannered office guy to crazed vigilante. Despite the fact that the latter half of the story is wildly far-fetched and filled with all kinds of holes (often to the point that it’s downright ridiculous), it’s a lot more entertaining (in the most awesomely bad sense of the word). Bacon clearly plays the pissed-off psycho a lot better than the freaked-out pansy. And he finally goes out and does some damage, Travis Bickle style.
As a whole, though, Death Sentence is sometimes slow and often silly. And it’s anything but subtle. The second half does have the slightest bit of craptacular appeal—but it’s not nearly enough to make it worthy of two hours of your time.
