Review: Death Sentence

* * * 1/2

Kevin Bacon, Kelly Preston, John Goodman, Aisha Tyler, Garrett Hedlund. Written Ian Jeffers. Directed by James Wan. Rated R. 110 minutes. 20th Century Fox.

I admit to being fascinated by true crime stories of ordinary people who, under extraordinary circumstances, cross some "civilized" line in the sand to commit acts of violence they never dreamed capable. And I also love 70s Charles Bronson films of the Death Wish variety, where a family man is preyed upon by vicious thugs and then further cornered by "the system," until his only way out is to blast through to the other side, an avenging angel of annihilation.

Director James Wan’s terrific new rush of a vigilante thriller Death Sentence, starring Kevin Bacon as a low-key father whose teenaged son is mercilessly slaughtered by skinhead thugs—and who shocks himself by beginning a gang war that takes down his family, world and a dozen lives in the process—is a prime example of the genre done well, with its intricately staged mayhem and top-notch performances that cut to the heart of a shattered family.  It may be unmistakably B-movie territory, but it is performed and directed with energy and commitment by Wan and Bacon, and it takes a well-worn formula and shakes us up unexpectedly, and considerably. Think you have seen urban revenge before? Not like this.

A tour-de-force Bacon stars as happy family man Nick Hume, a risk-assessment executive at an insurance company, with a loving wife (an effective Kelly Preston) and two opposite teenaged sons (Stuart Lafferty, Jordan Garrett). A chance stop at a gas station leads to a wrong place, wrong time encounter with a vicious band of skinheads led by sadistic Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund), who orders Hume’s eldest, favorite son executed as a rite-of-passage for a fledgling gang recruit. When a legal technicality leads to a jailed perpetrator going free, Hume takes the law into his own hands, to the rising suspicions of a police detective (Aisha Tyler) and his family. After murdering the accused killer, the gang retaliates resulting in a chain reaction and escalating urban war.

The efficient script, by novice scribe Ian Jeffers, economically sets up the happy home and foreshadows what is to come as Hume jokes to sons, "Can we all be civilized for once before I kill somebody?" And although this is a film that fulfills the tropes of its genre, the script also allows both Bacon and Preston the ability to grieve in several affecting scenes, before exploding into orgiastic violence.  It is these character moments that surprise us and invest the film with a sense of depth that really works.  Indeed, the surviving son is wracked with guilt as is the father, while the mother is paralyzed by sorrow, and then fear. 

Bacon, the dependable American actor now in a risk-taking career space (The Woodsman), reaches into depths of feeling that are undeniably impressive, wordlessly etching out pain as his son’s life slips away, reacting incredulously to taking a life himself, crying in the shower as he reconciles his own dark impulses or clutching wife Helen for support. There is also a grim scene where he faces an adversary in his office, as public and private worlds collide to the eyes of shocked coworkers. It is a supremely invested performance and real triumph for Death Sentence that Bacon’s award caliber work ratchets up the premise. 

And there are truly exciting action sequences here, lovingly built by director Wan (Saw), who clearly is unafraid to revel is movie violence but in this film also knows the consequences. Consider the extended chase with Bacon being pursued on foot down a city street in a hail of bullets. Wan uses impressive, disorienting long takes and a mobile camera, moving up and down throughout a parking garage, stalking whomever is in the frame, ending the sequence with a spectacular stunt. This is not computer-generated fakery, rather great set-up and camera work. Ditto the scene when thugs burst into Hume’s home and a showdown leads to a shattered staircase. Wan pulls no punches and the violence here is quick, ferocious and often split-second.  The climax features a brief, three-way shootout choreographed with such visceral elegance it deserves to be deconstructed.

Special note should be given to John Goodman as a creep supreme who houses an arsenal of artillery and happens to be the cold-blooded father of villain Darley.  Goodman, riding a line bewteen humor and horror, nearly walks away with the film during an extended scene explaining the power of each deadly weapon.  It’s a chilling, concentrated performance. 

Death Sentence has no moral axe to grind and no issue to peddle, and is not as contemplative as In the Bedroom or as novel as Death Wish. It is, however, a marked growth for its young director, going the extra mile to deliver characters we care about before hurling them into the abyss. Whereas Saw was simply torture-porn hung on fourth-rate material, Death Sentence allows Wan to construct and execute several confident payoff sequences, producing some of the year’s best thrills this side of Jason Bourne. Shot in washed out, grainy, grindhouse glee, it looks worn and gritty.

The film steps slightly out of bounds and appropriately over-the-top in its frantic, final reel allusions to Travis Bickle, with a feral Bacon pulling out the bloody stops to illustrate numerous examples of what a close-range shotgun can do to human flesh.

Death Sentence is a critic-proof audience movie, and a satisfying thrill machine that takes Bacon and Wan right over the edge.

-Lee Shoquist