Written by El Puerquito Magnifico
When the film Death Sentence was released in 2007, I was intrigued. It looked like an update (or rip-off?) of the 1974 film Death Wish with Kevin Bacon in the lead role rather than Charles Bronson. Okay, that’s fine – a lot of movies look like rip-offs of Death Wish, because a lot of movies are rip-offs of Death Wish. That in and of itself does not necessarily make a film bad. I’ve got no beef with a B-grade action movie, and I’ve got no beef with Kevin Bacon, so this movie seemed like it might be fun. I never did end up seeing it in the theaters, but when I had the chance to review the DVD, I jumped. I’d finally find out whether or not it had any merit.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. The novel that Death Sentence is based on was written by Brian Garfield, and it’s the follow up to another hit he’d written titled Death Wish, the same Death Wish that was made into a movie starring Charles Bronson. So Death Sentence is a rip-off of Death Wish that is actually based on the sequel to Death Wish. Weird and interesting, but as it turns out, the movie left me with a deathwish about halfway through.
The film opens with a montage of home video footage of the Hume family. Father, mother, and two sons. A family so disgustingly happy, you are actually hoping for their deaths by the time the opening montage is finished. Brutal, gruesome deaths…well, maybe that’s just me and I’m just sick. At any rate, the older son is clearly the golden child, handsome and bright and excellent at hockey, while the younger son just falls of his bike a lot.
While stopped at a gas station on the way home from a hockey game, Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) witnesses his son’s murder at the hands of a violent gang of thugs. Now, you can tell these guys mean business, because they all have tribal tattoos on their necks and/or faces. Real bad mamma-jammas. It’s not even a mugging or a robbery; it’s an initiation ritual for the youngest member of the group. In the ensuing scuffle, Nick unmasks the murderer and subsequently identifies him in a lineup a day or two later.
Realizing that the law will not grant him the justice he deserves, Nick refuses to testify against his son’s murderer, deciding to enact his own brand of vengeance. One cliché leads to another, and Nick ends up killing the guy, which sets off a chain reaction of revenge between the surviving members of the gang, including the slain criminal’s older brother and father, and Nick’s own family. Lots of bullets, lots of knifings, lots of bullet dodging. These guys are terrible shots.
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