Vengeance is green.

DEATH SENTENCE says it out loud. Back in ’74, when Bronson (as Paul Kersey) took justice into his tough-guy hands, America was reeling from rising crime rates in major cities, so his vigilantism was applauded by audiences. The DEATH WISH sequels progressively became unwatchable – not because of escalating violence or morality conundrums - but because (like the PLANET OF THE APES series) their production budgets nosedived with each sequel. But vigilantism is back. And being given the production value it deserves.

Since DEATH WISH and the DIRTY HARRY series, most movie media has shied away from people exacting their due recompense, instead muddying the media messages with moral hypocrisy, and unrealistic and unsatisfying resolutions. Now, not only is there Jodie Foster’s vigilante vehicle, THE BRAVE ONE (Sep 2007), there is also a mentally-retarded Amerikan president reneging on every law of the world and making up vigilante rules as he goes along, saying out loud how he kills citizens of other countries without any due process, how he tortures them without any evidence, how he would go about killing people of still more countries who have nothing at all to do with his initial vengeance strike against the faction who attacked America on September 11, 2001; an immoral madman who sends his own countrymen to die for his vigilantism, entreating them kill innocent people who are supposedly paying the price for their stance against Amerika. Vigilantism is now so enmeshed in the fabric of the Amerikan psyche due to the imbecile George W. Bush's actions, that movies like DEATH SENTENCE simply add to the avenger mentality synergy. Talk about moral hypocrisy.

Starring that guy who is, at most, six degrees from anyone, Kevin Bacon (as Nick Hume), DEATH SENTENCE pounds us so insistently with cliché in its first act that it almost (ahem) shoots itself in the foot. Idyllic family life, smokin' wife (Kelly Preston), two sons, every major boy event (like first bike rides, first steps, first base hit) videotaped professionally and made to look scratchy; dad and son in bad part of town, gang wearing leather, rain-soaked funeral, cop who doesn’t follow procedure... There’s even a picture of both sons on the bedside table in the dead son's bedroom - that was unnecessary icing on an overbaked cake: maybe in the parent’s bedroom, but what teen would have a picture of himself and his teen brother on his bedside table?! I don’t wanna go there…)

Hume’s Normal Rockwell is shattered when his eldest jock son is slayed in a senseless gang initiation in that “bad part of town.”

Then it’s Suburban Dads Gone Wild.

And a very satisfying avenger The Bacon makes, seeking and destroying his son’s killers in a compelling, “realistic” performance. Garrett Hedlund is the head street thug, Aisha Tyler is the non-prying detective, and John Goodman will surprise you, if not make you laugh out loud at his impertinent miscasting.

If this movie teaches us anything about dealing with thugs, it’s that you act quickly, you act forcefully and you act decisively. After his first almost passively-violent (yet still satisfyingly vengeful) encounter with the actual thug who killed his son, Hume finds he is forced to take charge of his vigilante destiny when the gang comes after him for their revenge. (It’s moments like these that we see what hot MILFs like Kelly Preston saw in their man way back when. Too bad marriage had to kill that spark.)

The film is well-made, well-directed, with a look like iron filings were accidentally spilled over the filmstock. There are some weird coincidences gussied up to look like “twists” and a tense chase scene that ends with a well-executed car-falling-off-roof stunt, which looks every bit as good as the trailer.

When Bacon shaves his head, and arms himself with an arsenal that would make Rambo say, “Dude, dial it down to a seven!” we know this ain’t Paul Kersey’s Chicago anymore – this is DEATH WISH for a generation weaned on HALO 3 and DANCING WITH THE STARS. (And if DANCING WITH THE STARS doesn’t make you wanna go out and shoot people, you’re already too numb to care…)


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