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.