my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Death Sentence
Director:   James Wan
Year:   2007
Genre:   Revenge
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   09.12.07

Other Movies Seen By This Director (6)
- The Conjuring
- The Conjuring 2
- Furious 7
- Insidious
- Insidious: Chapter 2
- Saw

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
09.12.07Cinemark Pflugerville It's movies like this that make me like Death Wish more and more.

I really wanted to like this. I like Kevin Bacon a lot and would love to see him really be a badass. I still think he's capable of it although here he's much more convincing as the scared dad than the revenge machine of the last act. It's just a shame this movie is so... not good. Occasional action scenes are effective (like the home invasion when Bacon runs from the sawed off shotgun and the parking garage chase that shows how exhausting all that running is) but so much of the world is so fake that I don't buy it and even Bacon's actions... OK so you kill the kid who killed your kid. I can buy that. Then the gang shoots at you in the middle of the street and you end up destroying a car and killing another gang member. You don't run away! You call the cops and act as if someone else killed the kid and they just think it's you. That would totally work and that way the annoying ass cop character has one fewer "you're in trouble, buddy" monologue.

She's easily my least favorite part of the movie. First of all, Aisha Tyler as a hardened detective is maybe the worst casting choice I've seen in a decade. We're talking Horst Bucholz in Magnificent Seven levels of bad (I bet this would be talked about way more if this movie was any good at all but her ruining an already-shitty film is pretty unnoteworthy). Then making her talk like a know-it-all while being aggressively ineffectual is like salt in the wound. I hate every second she has on screen and ever syllable spewing from her pie hole.

John Goodman is also a horrible horrible casting decision.

And then there's the gang. Never mind that the town itself is like a normal city with a horror movie nightmare on elmstreet ghetto, but this gang is like.... OK, I imagine gangs like this hanging out in Disneyland. Like this is the theme park equivalent of street toughs. Ornate face tattoos, custom paint jobs on classic muscle cars, leather dusters and fetish boots. If they can afford all that crap why don't they move out of the ghetto?

So, with both the good and bad guys annoying me, this movie didn't have much going for it. Too bad, really.