Death Sentence

After his son is killed by a street gang, an executive (Kevin Bacon) sets out for revenge.

Death Sentence is a frustrating movie. Director James Wan delivers a visually stylish film, but doesn’t seem to trust his own storytelling ability. Repeatedly, Wan does a great job of showing us things in a very economical manner only to then have a character tell us the very same thing. Chopping ten to fifteen minutes off the running time (and maybe losing a character or two) would have gone a long way toward making this a much tighter, and better, movie.

Still, none of this should overshadow the excellent performance by Kevin Bacon, who never overplays his character’s slow, moral death and delivers a very economical performance that should have been the absolute focus of the movie. Instead, Wan meanders along with several other peripheral characters much to the film’s detriment.