Death Sentence (2007)
Director James Wan (of Saw and Dead Silence) can never be accused of taking his time. The foreboding uh-ohs of his newest, Death Sentence, come fast and furious. We open on home videos of a family cuddling and bonding in a way that never happens outside of The Wonder Years. The dad (Kevin Bacon) talks about the future with his Promising Son. The dad has an Ironic For This Genre occupation (risk assessment) where he one day carelessly remarks that all things make sense in the world. That last one was a major, major UH-OH.
A few minutes later, the father and son are driving around in the city where they run out of gas and have to stop by Thunderdome to refill. The son’s throat is slit, and Bacon’s world is thrown topsy-turvey, and a typically careless legal system has nothing but jargon and compromise to offer. The catch here is that Bacon successfully offs the scum in question by about minute twenty. The scum happened to be the brother of even bigger scum though, and Bacon soon finds himself collar deep in urban warfare.
No one who thinks seriously about movies seems to like the Saw movies, but I admired the ingenuity of the first picture. James Wan and his writer Leigh Whannell managed to make a not quite competent Seven rip-off for a million bucks and ten days of shooting time, and got their feet in the door of industry in the process. The result may be questionable, but to have accomplished that at all is a bit of a feat. Dead Silence, their second picture released earlier in 2007, had an admirable Universal Horror fetish going on and little else.
Death Sentence, Wan’s third picture, and first without Whannell, works on its own terms. Yes, the script is absurd. Yes, Wan is still a show-off, turning every other scene into an elaborate CG assisted pan through some inanimate object (he’s still riffing on Fincher, without any of the finesse or much of the ambition.) Yes, the film is lit in such a way as to make The Crow look subtle. But the film has a blunt power, and that’s because Wan has an actor who can dive into the genre without compromising himself or looking sheepish.
Kevin Bacon is consistently underrated, and I think it’s because he’s too convincing exploring that coiled, bitter fuck you intensity that he does so well. There’s nothing self-conscious, or actorly about an angry, scary Kevin Bacon character: he’s angry, he’s scary, and he’ll blow your head off when provoked. He’s polishing a gun, not a mantel piece, and his work has consistently elevated films that would otherwise be forgettable. Check out his psycho in The River Wild if you haven’t already. The film plays things way too safe, but Bacon, Streep and Strathairn are a testament to what good acting can do for a just ok picture. Also watch Bacon’s work in Mystic River. He was the only of the three traumatized characters NOT to get awards recognition, and he was the only one I actually believed.
And you believe Bacon here when he morphs from accountant to Travis Bickle Rambo at the drop of a hat. You believe his indestructability because you find it impossible to believe that a man that enraged would allow himself to die. That’s absurd of course, but that’s the kind of logic you need to enjoy Death Sentence, and I did enjoy Death Sentence. Wan also, after three pictures, finally pulls off a legitimately exciting, suspenseful set piece. It begins when the gang spots Bacon and pursues him on foot through a crowded neighborhood, and ends in a brutal battle on a multi-level parking garage. Bacon soon finds himself shaving his head and ending the feud because Wan can’t resist cramming in a Taxi Driver rip-off. The film, after countless bloodless thrillers, is refreshingly nasty, with a still hypocritical but more convincing than you’d expect anti-revenge tang.
★★★
January 31st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Good shout out for Bacon. The guy never gets any credit though he’s almost always solid and frequently above the material he’s been given.
The first Saw had plenty of potential. Not all of it was realized, but enough of it to give you hope for the people that made it. It sounds like Wan is finding a niche.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:20 am
I think Wan has potential. Saw and Dead Silence are bad movies, but Death Sentence is at least an entertaining bad movie. If I was his creative agent I’d tell him to drop the over-direction (which probably started as a low budget disguiser) and go for something more minimal. He could use a bit more help in the script department too, even for the genres he works in.