by Karyn L. Beach

If when you hear the title Death Sentence, you instantly think of the 1974 classic Death Wish, you aren’t far off track. That movie followed a grieving father as he sought revenge against the men who had killed his wife and raped his daughter. The original was based on the book of the same name and although there were sequels, none were based on any of the novels. Death Sentence is based on the sequel to the original novel and follows a grieving father as he seeks revenge against the men who killed his son.

Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is living the American Dream. He’s a vice-president at his company, has a beautiful, adoring wife (Kelly Preston), an older son, Brendan (Stuart Lafferty), who’s a gifted hockey player and a younger son, Lucas, who is more artistic than athletic (Jordan Garrett). One night on the way home from a game, Nick flashes his lights at a pair of cars driving without their lights on. And since we’ve all read that oft-forwarded email, we (the audience) know that this is all part of a gang-initiation. The gang targets the Good Samaritan who was considerate enough to give the warning.

As Nick pumps gas, he sees his son, in the gas station heartlessly gunned down by a group of thugs. When it becomes clear that the shooter won’t get any hard time, Nick takes matters into his own hands and things escalate (and escalate again) with the stakes and the body count rising at every turn.

Death Sentence isn’t a horrible movie. The audience for this movie is clearly people who want to see a lot of gun-barrel justice and they’ll definitely get that. James Wan, who directed Saw, is helming this one and does not hesitate to show us heads and legs being blown clear off.

Kevin Bacon does the best that he can with his role but as his bloodlust gets more and more ridiculous, his performance gets more and more over-the-top. Garrett Hedlund, as homicidal gang leader Billy Darley, gets the dangerous menace down and is genuinely scary at times. Another scary performance comes from John Goodman (you remember him as Roseanne’s husband). Unfortunately, it wasn’t scary good, it was scary bad. He’s supposed to be this tough, seedy arms dealer but it just didn’t work. You can shout the f-word all you like but it takes more than a few f-bombs to create an edgy performance.

Aisha Tyler also makes an appearance as a cop who arrives too late and doesn’t know how to ask the obvious questions. I guess everybody needs a paycheck.

There are several intense action sequences but those aren’t enough to earn a ringing endorsement. Unless you are a die-hard, practically stalker fan on Kevin Bacon, you can definitely wait for video on this one.