Death Sentence Retrospective

James Wan’s follow up to his breakout, Saw, comfortably wears the generic trappings of the neo-fascist revenge fantasy, à la Death Wish (of which Death Sentence incidentally shares a title with its literary sequel). You know the score, Kevin Bacon’s Nick Hume has a snazzy job and he lives in a big house with his great family (we know they’re great because we see home video footage of them) until one day his son is killed with a machete. Why do bad thinks happen to great people? A bit of crying on the floor/in the shower/back on the floor later and Bacon is ready to shoot some street punks with guns. It’s not a great film.

But - and it’s a big, Nicki Minaj-esque, surgically enhanced ‘but’ - it has one of the greatest action set-pieces of the last decade. A mid-film foot chase through back alleys leads into a bravura one shot tracking sequence through a multi-story car park that culminates with a crunchy, money shot death. It’s such a dynamic, meticulous, thrilling sequence that it goes to show just how well Wan ‘gets’ the nuts and bolts mechanics of a thriller. Like Michael Mann or the crème of the Korean thriller scene the action is the drama and vice versa. Admittedly, it’s an incredibly showy sequence but boy does it pay off, casting the rest of the film in a blindingly favourable light.       

Amorous gushing aside, Bacon over-eggs and hams up his performance to the point of a convoluted food analogy. But back on track, Bacon does remind us that, when not gagging on the corporate paycheque pimping mobile providers, he really can hold the screen. When our man’s tooled up, shaven headed and shotgunning legs off with the best of them, you’re there with him.   

There is an air of Wan getting a bit big for his boots post the blow-up reception of Saw, lavishing the opening credits with the self-aggrandising ‘a James Wan film’ associated with the name-as-brad recognition of the Spielberg’s or the Nolan’s (you’ve made one film, James…). Also peppering the film with intertextual Saw references seems, well, masturbatory.         

By the end, Death Sentence does start to have notions above its station. The arch theme of nihilistic violence begets violence is heavy-handedly shoved in our face. Yeah, we’ve all seen The Last House on the Left, bet that was super fresh back in ’72 (or when Nietzsche penned that in the 19^th Century for the book learned ones of you). But then it farts away any pathos with something of a cheap, redemptive ending. Like I said it’s not a great film but in all sincerity, for that scene alone, it’s worth the price of admission*.

*My price of admission was 80p