Sentença de Morte

I've been debating about how to review this film...and you know what? I'll keep it as lean and focused as "Death Sentence" was. I got to view some fine film-making, expertly acted and directed. Bacon has always been an actor whose dives head-first into difficult roles, and this one covers a wide range of emotions...from family concern and love to grief to rage to fear to finally cold machine-like calm. I was particularly impressed with James Wan, who really raised his game to A-list level, easily creating moments of drama, action and suspense. His skill gave the film moments of real entertainment, because the plot was not...it's bleak and brutal, and hardly ever lets up...but like Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" or William Friedkin's "Bug", the film will stay with me for a long time.

I thought this movie was great. I think Bacon never fails to perform. The movies he picks to do show a lot of his depth as he very rarely plays a one dimensional character. There was a story to this movie. A very complicated story. If you didn't notice the story you got distracted by the violence. Some of the dialogue was cheesy but that is what makes it great.

The only problem I had with the film was the detective role. She seemed to serve zero purpose whatsoever. I am not taking away from the acting done for that role. But every scene she was in was slower and just did not fit with the rest of the movie. Other then acting as a very short winded inner monologue for Bacon's character, all she did was say no no, your safe, they're dead, and no.

We all knew where this movie was going we didn't need the attempt to turn into a crime drama.

If you did not like this movie you went into it expecting the wrong thing. This is a revenge movie. It had no supernatural parts. When someone was shot they bled a lot and they were in pain.

If you ever wanted to exact revenge on someone in your own mind or in your dreams go see this movie it is great.

James Wan (Saw) brings the ultra-violence to this gritty story of a suburban father (Kevin Bacon) who discovers the consequences of revenge after his son is murdered. The perpetrators of this senseless killing are a multi-ethnic (and highly visible) gang of drug dealers and cutthroats led by the psychotic Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund); when the case is thrown out on a technicality, Bacon takes a page from Charles Bronson's book (no surprise, as this is based on author Brian Garfield's 1975 follow-up to Death Wish) and pursues a vigilante course to avenge his boy. Things do not go according to Bacon's plan, which cues a series of frantic and well-executed action set pieces, most notably a parking structure chase that unfolds in a nearly unbroken take. Death Sentence breaks no new ground in the action-thriller department, and its characters and dialog are nearly indistinguishable from any violent crime movie of the last few decades (in its weakest moments, it resembles grind house fare like The Exterminator); however, Bacon is excellent (as always) as the mild-mannered architect who discovers his inner killer the hard way, and Wan's knack for screen mayhem and unsettling atmosphere are well used here. The DVD includes both the theatrical version and an unrated cut (which offers 10 additional minutes), as well as two making-of features that originally aired on the Fox Movie Channel, and several websites that focus on director Wan, his cast, and the film's elaborate stunts and fight scenes.

I've been told over time through industry professionals, sometimes in classes I've taken, quotes from movie stars and writers and directors and so on, that if you have a good script and a mediocre director you can still have a decent film, but if the script is terrible it doesn't matter how great the director is but the project won't be able to fly. I still am not sure if James Wan is a great director - he really has a mixed record for me now that I've seen most of his films (in brief, Saw sucks, Conjuring 1 & 2 are terrific, and Furious 7 is... Furious 7! it has some extreme/dumb things and yet is brainless fun). But he does pull out a lot more directorially out of a script that is at times convincing and dramatic, and other times is hackneyed revenge/sometimes cop drama.

There's one "virtuoso" scene as critics like to call it - which is euphemism for 'impressive' - where Kevin Bacon is being chased by the thugs, first on the street during day time (they don't give a f*** so much they open fire in broad daylight with a lot of people on the street), and then give chase through alleys, inside a kitchen, and leading out to a parking lot. Though at first it's cut fairly conventionally, the way Wan is shooting this is inspired (he used a 'rickshaw' type of device so the camera could lead in front of the actors at a faster speed, plus on golf carts), but when it gets into the parking lot Wan decides to go full Chanwook Park and do it in one shot. And it's done with extreme creativity (both extreme and creative) as Bacon and the other actors are running, actually running, and going through little patches of space to go one level to another until our (anti)hero gets to the top level where his car is at.

That last aspect of how he happened to be where his car is exactly at is convenient story-wise (that it's the parking lot where he works at, he just happened to get back there while running in a frenzy), nevertheless Wan has a strong visual idea and executes it with his crew wonderfully. And throughout much (though not all) of Death Sentence, he is doing his best to make a (to say it generously) hit or miss screenplay fly as something harrowing and intense. The movie gives us a good look at a family - the dialog between this somewhat typical 'happy' family, brothers in-fight a bit, one son gets in trouble at school (where mom happens to be Dean) - and then the bad thing happens, where one of the sons is killed in a "gang initiation" thing that looks like a gas station robbery, and the killer is let go without much fanfare.

The details of how this young thug is practically let go by the court for, uh, "reasons" is a little too tidy and convenient (the gas station happened to be the "only one in America" without surveillance), and maybe that's what I keep coming back to as a problem with the movie: convenience, things that the movie kind of lets go so the story can keep going forward. Other things like that is how the cop character (Detective Wallis, played by Aisha Tyler replacing a "50-ish white guy", which is cool!) doesn't do more when Nick Hume starts to take matters into his own hands, first going after the released killer in the middle of the night, and then when, later on (spoilers) two cops are killed while the main batch of criminals go through them to get into Nick's house in the middle of the night to settle scores. Like, I know you're angry at Nick for making this situation worse and worse by starting s*** with criminals, but now two cops are DEAD, you have more important things to worry about now!

So there's logic inconsistencies. Why recommend it? For me, the gritty approach to the camera-work and the acting from the criminal characters (and John Goodman in a small but pivotal role!) connected and felt strong. I can criticize certain parts of the style, like the choice of music (sometimes it's alright, other times it feels like it was picked by an uninspired/lazy music supervisor with some of these songs), but Wan mostly got how to make this intense by going for 'real' and yet it's still a cinematic approach to the 'real', if that makes sense, like it has a logical approach to how characters move through rooms and buildings and work with guns.

The other aspect is Bacon. He really, really brings it and if you like him generally this is him going full blown fiery/emotional force. But there's a progression to it - he is playing a 'normal' guy, fairly white collar, suburban middle class, and when Nick does this first violent act he's genuinely shocked, in tears, shaking. It's not something that looks and feels like a movie character that brushes things off, and his vulnerability brings us closer to his experience as he digs himself deeper into vigilante/revenge drama (even down to how he does a 'Taxi Driver' shaving-head bit, which is much messier and all the better for it). All the while, this actor brings it and finds the moments where nuance can play into it. He and Wan and a few other things elevate a hackneyed script, which is the exception to the general principle of 'script script script'. In this sake, I dug it. Usually.

Nothing new and exciting here for what is fast becoming a tired old genre, but boasting the considerable talents of Kevin Bacon in the lead role, Death Sentence is way above average and never outstays its welcome. Nick Hume & his son Brendan stop at a gas station one night and a violent turn of events transforms Nick into a maelstrom of fury...

Asking the question of just what lengths we would go to to look after our families, Death Sentence is merely following on from the likes of Death Wish and Eye For An Eye. But here the violence is upped to such a gruesome standard, it creates maximum impact. Yet it's not the violence that leaves the lasting impression, it's the descent of the main protagonist that terrifies the most. A humble and decent man spiralling out of control, done down by the system, he finds darkness within him that he surely didn't know he had.

Some sequences here are excellent and well staged by director James Wan, and he shows considerable skill with his fluid camera. But these things tend to get over looked in a film of this type. Elsewhere, although we are asked to swallow the impossible for one too many occasions, and the cops are stupid beyond belief, the film does find a couple of narrative tricks to also keep it out of formulaic tedium. Kevin Bacon deserves better than this for sure, but he's great in the dual role and as revenge thrillers go, in case I haven't violently rammed home the point yet, this really hits the mark. Kind of like a kick in the privates really. 7/10