DEATH SENTENCE Film Review - 4/9/07
The perfect family soon gets torn apart in James Wan's (The Director of "Saw") "Death Sentence". Having seen his name on the credits I was hoping for something different from his "Saw" films that might be; dare I say, a step up from the norm. Having read a bit about Kevin Bacon being attached to the project and a scene where he shaves his head for real in a one-take once-only shot I really thought this would be interesting. Unfortunately having heard about comparisons to "Deathwish" being updated to the current here & now - it got worse when I found out it was actually based on the original novel of Death Wish by author Brian Garfield. So instead of Charles Bronson blubbing a bit over his family's demise then for the rest of the film killing numerous bad guys - we get Kevin Bacon emoting anguish & tears, lots of soul-searching & heart wrenching hand wringing for most of the film with his family and for the last 20 minutes or so blowing away a handful of street scum. Kevin Bacon is a fine actor and I can see no reason why he chose to do this project? Even more so for James Wan? The only stand out is a blistering cameo turn from John Goodman who plays a vicious and very nasty piece of work who deserves everything he gets! A totally redundant re-make that isn't very good which has slipped into the cinemas with no advertising or fanfare and will probably slip out again quietly onto DVD in a couple of months no doubt in an attempt to recover it's Production costs.
posted by Hugh Jarrs | 8:26 pm
1 Comments:
Having read Hugh's review, I checked out the film at my local flea-pit the other day. And to be honest all I could see in it was a routine shoot-em-up movie. I was attracted to it mainly because it was directed by James Wan who made an admirable impression with Saw, his debut, in 2004. That was a highly original work so one hoped that Death Sentence would be too. Wan attempts to bring out the emotional side of the proceedings with Bacon showing plenty of emotion and tears over the murder of his wife and son. Most good films need an emotional element but the acting and the characters here are just too plastic to make us sympathise with his plight. In addition, the transformation of an immaculately suited businessman into a shaven headed thug should have been an interesting theme but it is so unconvincingly put across here that one leaves the cinema feeling disappointed. Wan's direction is brisk and there is a good fight sequence between Bacon and one of the gang members in a run-away-car that's about to fall off the top storey of a multi-storey car park that wrings out some reasonable suspense but all in all, its a lacklustre offering and the ending is feeble. As for the connection with Death Wish, I cannot judge because that is a film that I still have yet to watch.
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