In Paul Talbot’s excellent Bronson’s Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films, Brian Garfield, author of the original Death Wish novel, says he was disappointed in the 1974 Charles Bronson film of his book because it lacked subtlety. In fact, he wrote the sequel to counteract what he saw as the negative effects of the film. Death Sentence, the book, is about reformation and going legit. It’s about why vigilantism just doesn’t work. Man, did this movie screw up that message.

Director James Wan’s version of Death Sentence is practically a celebration of vigilantism. Sure, the film hammers home the message that the business of revenge is soul rotting, but it doesn’t offer up any solutions. The legal system doesn’t work. Cops are lazy and slow. And the bad guys always can and will find you. The only place a person is safe today is behind the barrel of a gun.

Kevin Bacon stars as Nick Hume, a man who specializes in (or is just fascinated by) risk assessment. He’s got a nice house in the suburbs, two beaming teenage boys, and a doting wife. Elder son Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) is looking good enough to play professional ice hockey (the old man’s wish). Life is pretty good. But that all changes when Nick and Brendan stop at a petrol station in the wrong part of town. There, Brendan is killed by a gang of hooligans. Distraught over the loss of his child, Nick is incensed to learn that the murderer will serve, at most, five years. Rather than allow that to happen, he tracks down his son’s murderer and kills him. When the gang, led by the merciless Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund), catches wind of the retribution killing, they decide it’s time to go to war with Nick. By the end of the film, Nick, who has lost nearly everything, snaps and goes into what I’d dub Travis Bickle mode.

Sure, there’s something about vigilantism that is appealing. The audience I saw the film with cheered when Nick blew away scumbags with his shotgun. They hollered when he bashed in heads and sent thugs tumbling. It’s wish fulfilment. Haven’t we all, at one time or another, wanted to take the law into our own hands? But while Death Sentence taps into that wellspring of Wild West passion, it’s ultimately let down by weak performances, absurd characterization and creaky plot twists.

Get this: the killer gang is composed of tattooed skinheads (the kind you never see outside of Hollywood backlots) who ride around town in the most conspicuous vehicles imaginable, shooting at nearly everything in sight... and yet the cops can’t seem to track them down.
Bearing little resemblance to Garfield’s source novel, Ian Mackenzie Jeffers’ script is littered with heavy-handed allusions, ridiculous caricatures, and laughable dialogue (Aisha Tyler, as Detective Wallis, gets the best howlers).

While best known for the incredibly successful slasher pic, Saw, director Wan has a distinctively lowbrow style. He shoots Death Sentence handheld, with gritty lighting schemes and a DIY aesthetic. There are some good action set pieces (the long single shot in the parking structure is a technical knock-out), but for every good sequence, he’s got two or three really awful ones. Anytime the film gets sentimental, the soundtrack swells with ethereal vocals that just drain away the emotion. And don’t get me started on the ‘rock’ songs that pepper character entrances and dramatic highlights; Wan is not only incredibly heavy-handed but he has terrible taste in music to boot.

Death Sentence could have been an exciting and meaningful exploration of what vigilantism does to a society, to an individual. It could have been a thoughtful look at the impact of violence on our daily lives. I would have even been happy if it was just a cold-blooded, old-school vengeance flick. As it is, Death Sentence is the embodiment of everything writer Garfield hated about Death Wish: it’s slap-dash, sleazy, and unsophisticated.

Keith Breese