Kevin Bacon, Garrett Hedlund, John Goodman, Kelly Preston, Matt Leary, Leigh Whannell

To say “Death Sentence” is filmmaker James Wan’s best film doesn’t mean a hell of a lot. Sure, his “Saw” was well-done (and lets admit it, it made him and partner Leigh Whannell a mint), but what worked about it was its imaginative storytelling not the direction, which, to say the least, was pretty much of the ‘point and shoot’ variety.

Wan’s last film, “Dead Silence”, confirmed what most of us had assumed – that the Aussie wunderkind left the world of no-budget short films a little too early.

With “Silence” he had a budget, an OK cast and the backing of a major studio… and even then, he couldn’t put the resources to good use. The biggest problem seems to be that the filmmaker is unsure of what he wants - resulting in messy movies that unsuccessfully blend conflicting tones and themes. Maybe if Wan had a few snazzy camera tricks to throw in, his films might play better, but as I said, Wan’s definitely a graduate of the ‘press record and keep the camera steady’ school of filmmaking so most of the time the story’s as stale as the directing job. There’ll be no lunches with Michael Mann just yet.

“Death Sentence” is a step-up… but not a steep one. More or less a “Death Wish” remake but with Wan’s unsuccessful and customary mish-mash of tones, it stars Kevin Bacon as a seemingly normal dad who turns vigilante when thugs slice his kids throat. The man gets more than he bargained for… with the gang declaring war on not only the man, but the rest of his family. The message here (I think)? sometimes things just should be left as they are.

To Wan’s benefit, he does try his hand at doing something a little different here – it’s more of a suspense thriller than his usual horror bag – and he’s hired a cinematographer that isn’t afraid to try different things, visually-speaking, but all-in-all it’s still a film with a budget that might’ve been better spent on another of the studio’s releases.

Webisodes and a couple of featurettes accompany the movie.

Rating :
Reviewer : Ramius