I went into the movie
thinking, “It has Kevin Bacon.
How bad
could it be? Bacon
makes everything
better, whether it be a cheesy movie or a cheeseburger!” I’ll never think
that again.
Bacon stars as Nick Hume
– a
low key executive with a perfect family.
Of course, disaster strikes when he and his oldest
son are on their way
home from a hockey game, and the young boy is killed during a robbery
staged to
facilitate a gang initiation. Once
Nick
realizes the system won’t punish the men responsible in the
ways he wants, the
suburban father takes the law into his own hands and starts a war with
the gang
he might not be able to finish.
Will Nick be able to protect
his family and hurt the gang? Will
it
all be worth it?
Death
Sentence is a mélange
of over-acting, bad writing and a final act that becomes more absurd by
the
minute. Director
James Wan does a good
job staging some intense chase scenes, heart pounding danger for our
hero and
surprise action, but, at times, has the clumsy touch of a drunken
Russian
circus bear. Death
Sentence
becomes
overly melodramatic, especially with loud music playing over scenes of
people
crying out in pain and agony, a very cliché technique when
not done right.
Plus, every actor seems to
have taken acting steroids, which results in ‘roid rage
performances that are
way over the top. Even
Bacon seems to
have used the cream or the clear as he becomes overly comical when
trying to
cover up Nick’s vigilante ways, and makes me giggle a bit
when he tries to look
tough, while Aisha Tyler appears to need some caffeine to wake up her
performance as Detective Wallis – the detective trying to
investigate the case. And,
you will be driven to guffaws or the
exit by John Goodman’s appearance as a crime kingpin with an
ever changing
accent. Sometimes,
his character might
be from Chicago. Other times, maybe it is Maine.
Yet other times, I think he might be auditioning for
a Scorsese
movie.
Then, Death
Sentence
starts
to get bad. Very
bad. Extremely bad. In the last act (the last
20 minutes), it
appears everyone involved gives up and tries to substitute carnage and
explosions for good story. What
was a
slightly below average drama story becomes a cartoon.
Death
Sentence is
one of
those movies where the audience reactions and chatter is more
entertaining than
what you have on the screen.
½
Waffles (Out of 4)
Death
Sentence is
rated R for strong brutal bloody violence and
pervasive language.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com
