Death Sentence

Not having anything better to do Monday afternoon, I went to see Death Sentence. Why did I choose this movie instead of more than a dozen others that were playing? This one started the soonest after I got there, and unless I'm sure a movie will be too stupid to sit through and not worth paying for (Balls of Fury, anyone?), I'm interested in checking it out. One of the good things about a lifelong interest in film and movies; you're not very picky about what you're willing to see. I like Kevin Bacon, anyway; he's always worth watching.

I was a bit surprised by the movie, for the most part, because it was not ridiculously gratuitously needlessly violent for the most part. It went a little over the top right toward the end, but one expects that; it's the big climactic sequence. The rest of it, however, does its best to remain subdued. Threatening, yes, but never overbearing, like I'm sure the Saw movies are, which is why I've never bothered to sit through or pay for any of them. I mention those horrible horrors because James Wan, the producer of all the Saw movies, as well as the director of the first one, is the director of Death Sentence. It seems to be in his nature to go over the top, and he must have realized a certain amount of restraint was necessary to make Death Sentence work.

And it does work, although there are long stretches where it turns into nothing more than a family drama, and once that part is over, it becomes a silly chase movie, but is also a very harsh revenge flick at the same time. Confused? Don't be; it's just a movie. It tries to reach into all the corners of the box it's marketed into, but it's too thin to stretch to all four of them at the same time. So it goes back and forth, but mainly, it's a revenge flick. It's simple, really; Kevin Bacon kills a bunch of punk ass gang member shitheads because they killed his son for no reason. And while it never goes too far, it never really goes anywhere.

For you film geeks out there, this movie contains an awful lot of examples of how one might go wrong using major de-saturation in the digital intermediate, as well as one outdoor sequence that underwent skip-bleach processing when it didn't need to, because it doesn't really match the rest of the look of the film. However, this is merely my personal opinion, and not only might I be wrong in regards to how the image was attained, but others may think it looks awesome. I too might think it looked awesome if I thought it was really serving a cinematic purpose, but I'm sure it was only done to give the film that grainy, gritty look, and it just doesn't quite have the impact I think they wanted it to. One can guess they were trying for a look that often came about in the 70's, which was simply due to the film stock and lighting they used at the time, and not through the same processes used today, because Death Sentence is directly related to the Charles Bronson series Death Wish; is actually adapted from the same novel, or something like that. Read up on it if you're interested; it's never a bad thing to learn something new.