In James Wan's (Saw, Dead Silence) new revenge thriller Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Every other movie ever made) stars as a Nick Hume, a mild-mannered insurance company executive with a smokin' hot wife (Kelly Preston, the world's greatest beard), two teenage sons and a beautiful mcmansion in a bucolic neighborhood. Hume's suburban tranquility is quickly obliterated, however, when his oldest son is brutally murdered before his eyes -- an event clumsily foreshadowed immediately beforehand as Hume, chatting with his wife about the son's impending departure to college, jokes, "We may never see him again." Cut to a gang of murderous skinheads arriving in a pair of souped-up muscle cars, a machete across the throat, a preponderance of blood (this is the director of Saw, remember), a tidy grief montage with an Enya-esque soundtrack, and suddenly we have our motivation.
When it comes time to testify against the douche who murdered his kid, Hume contracts a sudden, convenient case of amnesia and the cocky cretin is set free. Hume's forgetfulness is intentional: angered by the light jail sentence reserved his son's killer, the embittered dad decides to take matters into his own hands and mete out his own brand of suburban vigilante justice.
Death Sentence starts out with the potential of being an entertaining, if unoriginal, revenge flick, but that potential is gradually squandered as the movie grows progressively more ridiculous with each successive scene. Horror director Wan certainly deserves kudos for attempting to branch out. Unfortunately for him, the standards are a bit higher outside the horror genre for things like plot and character development -- elements considered optional in the world of slasher flicks -- and Death Sentence is clearly lacking in both categories.
Wan certainly has a solid grasp of the visual aspects of filmmaking, but he has an absolute tin ear for dialogue, and the result is a thriller replete with unintentionally comic moments. By the third act, Kevin Bacon has morphed into a sort of vigilante Rodney Dangerfield, his every line eliciting belly laughs from the audience. And not on purpose.
ReelzChannel Rating: 