Death Sentence: Kevin Bacon Is Screaming For Vengeance(Spoilers!!)

“Marty. Y'know what we got here? Motherfuckin' Charlie Bronson. Mr. Majestyk.”
-- Drexl Spivey from True Romance

“Of course! We're one big happy fleet! Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold?”
-- Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

“They were all alive until they met you, Frank.”
-- Harmonica from Once Upon A Time In The West

The great tragedy of growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s is that I did not know what an incredible actor Charles Bronson was when he made Death Wish back in 1974. In the early 1980’s, I only knew him from his roles in the Death Wish films and his later films. Not all bad films by the way, not at all; Death Hunt with Lee Marvin is particular favorite of mine. Before Bronson took the role of Paul Kersey in the original Death Wish, he had already starred as one of the most iconic characters in cinema. Harmonica in Once Upon A Time In The West. Digging deep is essential and I dig deeper than I care to admit. Discovering his work in The Great Escape, Master Of The World, The Dirty Dozen, The Valachi Papers, The Magnificent Seven, Villa Rides and Mr. Majestyk opened my eyes to his previous work. He was more than just a tool for Golan-Globus; he was so much more. Just look at his work in The Indian Runner for further proof. Bronson was always spot on, even in much of his lesser work. Charles Buchinsky was so full of raw emotion, rage and fury; he never got his due.

What does any of this have to do with James Wan’s Death Sentence? Plenty. Death Sentence is based on a novel by Brian Garfield who also wrote Death Wish. Death Sentence stars another actor who has never gotten his due. Kevin Bacon is more than just an everyman. He is an actor’s actor. His films have shown an actor of great range and always reliable. It saddened me that he did not get the same accolades for his work in Mystic River that his costars Tim Robbins and Sean Penn received. It just goes to show me that awards mean little in the short and long run. Bacon’s Sean Devine is the unsung hero of the film and of Dennis Lehane’s epic novel.

At first, it must seem strange that Kevin Bacon is starring in a film by James Wan-- the director of Saw and the very bland, Dead Silence. Death Sentence is a step up for Wan. This may be the first film I truly like by him. Bacon is perfect as Nick Hume. He takes the everyman of every previous role and sucked it into the persona of Nick Hume-- Hume is going to need all the help he can get. Nick Hume has the perfect life, the perfect job and the perfect family. Hume is living the epitome of the American Dream. He is an insurance company executive who believes in order. The order he so richly believes in comes to end one horrific night. On the way home from his son’s hockey game, they stop at a gas station. On the way, Hume had flashed his lights at two approaching cars that have their lights off. It may be an urban legend, but you never flash your lights at cars in a film-- gang initiation ritual follows! Nick’s son, Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) goes into the gas station to buy something. All of sudden the gang members from earlier pull up for gang member initiation night. Brendan is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nick tries to save his son, but Brendan is sliced by Joe Darley’s (Matt O’Leary) machete. He takes him to the hospital, but it is too late. Hume’s order is destroyed.
His wife, Helen (Kelly Preston) and other son, Lucas (Jordan Garrett) are devastated. Nothing will ever be the same again.

There is a problem. Nick is the only witness to this heinous crime. The best the gang member will get is maybe three to five years according to the attorney. To Nick, this is unacceptable. At the pre-trial hearing, he claims he does not remember if that is the criminal that killed his son. From this moment on, Nick Hume is on a mission. Hume becomes Paul Kersey, Frank Castle, Beatrix Kiddo, Harmonica, Alex J. Murphy, Travis Bickle and all the other vigilantes. Many have said that Death Sentence is nothing more than a Taxi Driver retread and I have to put my foot down. Taxi Driver is a brilliant film that said more about America in the post-Vietnam War era than any other during that time. It was about more than just Travis cleaning the streets of its trash. It was about America and how we had fallen from grace. Travis was a great metaphor for America at that time. I am not sure that James Wan and screenwriter, Ian Jeffers had that in mind. I think their film is more a homage to films like William Lustig’s Vigilante, Michael Winner’s Death Wish and Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45. Yes, this is James Wan’s grindhouse film and it is pretty decent. While I feel the film has similar elements to Taxi Driver, I doubt anyone is going to watch this and try to impress Kelly Preston. It is a different kind of revenge thriller; this is the vigilante genre. It is about vengeance! It is DIY taken to the extreme. Still, when it comes to vengeance, all of us are taking pointers from Chan-wook Park’s Vengeance Trilogy.

The moment Hume takes the law into his own hands he believes that this will restore the order he has lost. The gang of thugs he must do battle with will fight him every turn of the way. The gang is lead by Billy Darley, played with haunting menace by Garret Hedlund. When his brother, Joe, is killed by Nick; the ultimate street war begins. Billy issues a death sentence on the rest of Nick’s family. The failure of the law and Nick’s descent into primal rage have lead to the destruction of everything he holds dear. The second half of the film is all out assault of Hume’s one man army against Darley’s army. One of the film’s major highlights is an epic chase through the city streets as Nick is pursued by Darley’s men. I was on the edge of my seat. It culminates in a parking garage that is a loving homage to Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. I could not help but think of Peter Weller’s Murphy when looking at Bacon’s Hume starting to get even.

I was shocked that James Wan had made a decent revenge thriller. It never dawned on me. Sure, Saw was a very successful film on many levels. There will be a new Saw film every Halloween for the rest of my life. Dead Silence, on the other hand, was bland and not worth the effort. Death Sentence boasts a strong supporting performance by John Goodman as Bones, a gun dealer, who has his own crosses to bear. The film does have a weakness and that is Aisha Tyler as Detective Wallis. She seemed more at home in this week’s Balls of Fury or as a guest on Tough Crowd. She seems out of place in this type of film. Death Sentence works very well as a pumped up vigilante thriller. Who knows what Jodie Foster and Neal Jordan have in store for us with The Brave One? In 2007, the spirit of Bernhard Goetz is very much alive in the multiplex.

Halloween: Reawakening The Monster and Shaking Up Mythology (Spoilers!!!)

"He's more machine now than man; twisted and evil."

-- Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

"These eyes do not see what you and I see. Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the absence of light, these are of a psychopath."

-- Dr. Samuel Loomis from Halloween (2007)



Mythology is very important to me. It is the chain of desire that keeps me bound and hungry for the iconography of pop culture and the delusions of a better tomorrow. When I was younger, mythology was not to be messed with by my rigid self. As I have gotten older, I have learned that it is okay to go back and mess with things—nothing is written in stone. When George Lucas went back to do the Star Wars prequels, my loyalty to mythology slowly came undone. He did not rape my childhood, but he did make me relax on any hardcore grip I had on his mythology or any other for that matter. Still, I am not sure if I really needed to see how and why Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. The imagination can produce some wild variations on that myth. Prequels are a risky business—some work and others do not. Rob Zombie has taken an enormous risk with his remake of John Carpenter's 1978 classic film, Halloween. I am sure this film will cause a lot of unrest in the horror film community. I have read so many varied reactions to the film. Some love it, some hate it and some have mixed views. I was surprised by how much I liked this film-- I can hear the knives being sharpened in the background. Rob Zombie has made this version very much his own, but he shows respect for the original. I liked how the original version of The Thing From Another World is playing on the television on both Halloween nights in Zombie's film as in the original film. It is nice wink to John Carpenter who made a brilliant remake of The Thing in 1982. I do not think Zombie's version is better, but I think it is a fine film in its own right. I think it should be the blue print how to approach remakes from this point forward. Halloween is a major triumph for Rob Zombie.


The film's greatest asset is the depiction of Michael Myers the whole film. Michael Myers, like other horror film icons such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and countless others have become more and more cartoonish with each film sequel. Scary Movie IV did Saw's Jigsaw in for good, but Saw III still made me cringe in places. Zombie has reawakened the monster inside Michael Myers. He is to be feared in this film. There is a feeling of dread that never leaves the film. Myers is a truly scary monster. The risk of portraying Michael Myers as a human being pays off for Rob Zombie. I did not expect this at all. There is the danger in showing us how Michael Myers became the monster he is; we might show some empathy for this pathetic kid who looks like a demented Tanner from The Bad News Bears films. By showing us a very human Michael Myers, Rob Zombie has recreated a very cruel beast. The true horror of humanity is our legacy of brutality-- the evil that we are capable of doing to one another. That is why Zombie's Myers is so scary-- a human being did this! Another version of this film with a different director might have verged on comedy-- Michael Myers meets Harold and Kumar at the Haddonfield White Castle. While the original film focuses on the events of the present in the film, in this version we witness the young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) in all his sadistic glory. Michael did not stand a chance. When William Forsythe is your Mom's boyfriend, all bets are off. Ronnie White is not the best role model for any child, but Michael has bigger problems than this sorry excuse of human waste. Michael is picked on by the school bullies. They tease him about his stripper mother, Deborah Myers, played by Sheri Moon. Moon's Deborah is very interesting; she truly loves her son. She has to go into school every time he gets into trouble. She does care, but is oblivious to her son's sadistic behavior. She cannot seem to bring herself to the realization that her son is a little monster. On Halloween night, she promises that the next day things will be different for all of them. Part of me hoped that this would truly happen, but Rob Zombie is very respectful to the film's mythology. When Deborah leaves for work, his sister is supposed to take him trick or treating. This does not happen. Instead, she and her boyfriend go upstairs to have sex. And the rest is history, Michael brutally murders Ronnie White, his sister and her boyfriend. Would things have been different had she taken him trick or treating?

The casting in the film is spot on for the most part. Yes, it is an absolute joy to see Sybil Danning, Sid Haig, Danny Trejo, Dee Wallace, Brad Dourif, Udo Kier, Richard Lynch, Clint Howard, Leslie Easterbrook, Bill Moseley and so many other familiar faces from the golden age of exploitation films and previous Zombie films. Yet, it is the casting of Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Samuel Loomis that works brilliantly. It is the ultimate compliment to Donald Pleasence. McDowell's Loomis seems like a sick and perverted joke. Is this for real? Is Alex de Large the best possible doctor for Michael Myers while at Smith's Grove Mental Hospital? The funny thing is that McDowell brings so much to the part. The recent career injections from Entourage, Gangster No.1 and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead only add to his take on Loomis. There is a tender bond that develops between them, but I never got the feeling that Zombie was trying to make us feel sorry for Michael. There is a sense of revulsion while we look on as Loomis tries to interact with Michael. This child is a beast; does he not see it? When Deborah comes to visit Michael (which she does weekly), there is that same kind of revulsion, but this is her son. Still, this son has taken so much from her. It is only after Michael stabs a nurse in the cafeteria that Deborah comes to terms with the fact that her son is the personification of evil. She commits suicide and Michael's younger sister, Laurie, is adopted by the Strode family. The older Michael is played by Tyler Mane and he towers over everyone. The other scenes that throw me off are the scenes between Michael and Danny Trejo's Ismael Cruz, one of the workers at Smith's Grove. He is very kind to Michael and it is an odd, but nice touch.

After fifteen years, as in the original film, Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove and returns to Haddonfield, Illinois. Micheal's escape sequence has to be seen to believed-- can no one stop him? The second half of the film is very much like the original film, except Zombie is a sadistic and brutal director. His horror is cruel and mean spirited, as it should be. I expect nothing less from the man who created The Devil's Rejects-- Zombie's underappreciated cult masterpiece, a film steeped in 70's exploitation nostalgia that could rival Tarantino as far as I am concerned. The Devil's Rejects pulled a Wrath of Khan on all of us. The Devil's Reject's is so far ahead on every level of Zombie's previous film, The House of 1,000 Corpses. While I like Zombie's first film and his admiration for all things from the Seventies, it cannot hold a candle to the second film. The Devil's Rejects plays like a hyper/ultra violent cross between Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and The Getaway, fused with The Empire Strikes Back. Halloween is a different beast from that film and anything would feel like a letdown. When Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield, we do feel like we have seen this before, but not in such a brutal way. Zombie takes no prisoners; his Halloween is far more sadistic than that of John Carpenter's Halloween.

Michael has come back for Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). He has come back to finish things-- what does he want with his sister, Laurie? I will not compare Compton's Laurie to the Jamie Lee Curtis portrayal in the original. In this version, Laurie seems more a plot device; we never get a chance to really know her. In the original version, she is the main character. Rob Zombie's interests is in Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis in this film. The film could have easily been called All about Michael Myers. Everyone else is on the sidelines and only called in when needed.

I feel Rob Zombie has done a very good job bringing his version of Halloween to life. All of his trademarks are on full display from his previous films. His use of music is still on target. I loved hearing Rush's Tom Sawyer although nothing beats the use of Free Bird during the bloody climax of The Devil's Rejects. Tyler Bates does a great job of using John Carpenter's original, iconic theme and the variations work well. The New York Times ran a silly editorial about the demise of the horror film back in June of this year. This was after the dismal box office returns for Hostel: Part II. I felt the article was premature. The genre will be kept alive with filmmakers like Rob Zombie. His enthusiasm and passion for filmmaking are infectious. Better him than Fred Durst behind the camera! Rob Zombie remade Halloween and the sky did not fall. He contributed to the mythology of Michael Myers. In the process he added to the mythology of John Carpenter.