By Brandon Nolta

Kevin Bacon is like the ranch salad dressing of actors. He goes with damn near everything, and makes damn near everything better through his presence (although even he couldn’t save HOLLOW MAN). Why doesn’t this guy have an Oscar? Hell, he’s never even been nominated, which is one of those mystifying Hollywood events, much like how Uwe Boll keeps getting money to make films. Anyway, he’s headlining the just-released DEATH SENTENCE, now blowing holes in a cineplex near you, and even if you detest strong movie violence or stories about some guy on a retribution kick—both of which are in this film in abundance—you should go see this one. Bacon is surrounded by fine acting and writing, but in the end, it’s really all about him. Be warned, though: It’s dark and grim, wildly effective and too strong for repeated consumption.

Mr. Bacon plays Nick Hume, a well-to-do executive with a lovely wife (Kelly Preston), two normal teenage sons and the picturesque home in the suburbs. Life is grand for Nick, until an unplanned stop for gas and a slushy turns into a nightmare when his oldest son Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) gets caught in a gang initiation and is killed. When a hard-nosed prosecutor explains that there’s no case against Joe Darley (Matt O’Leary) except for Nick’s testimony, and the best he can get is 3-5, Nick decides on a different tack. He tracks Joe to an apartment building and fatally stabs him. Unfortunately, this runs him afoul of Billy (Garrett Hedlund), Joe’s older, smarter and far more psychotic brother. Now it’s an escalation between two men, an exchange of Pyrrhic victories that a sympathetic homicide detective (Aisha Tyler) tries to stop.


Sounds pretty traditional in its setup, but once the film sets up the Hume family as characters (done skillfully through a home video montage) and gets rolling, it’s apparent the filmmakers have something more on their minds than revenge fantasies. There is less violence than you might expect, but the stuff that’s here is brutal and unflinching; there are no rah-rah moments here. Bacon plays Nick as a smart, observant thinker, whose leaps into action show him to be resourceful with what he has at hand. However, he does make mistakes, one of which turns out to be incredibly costly. Hedlund is given more of a traditional black hat role, but he invests his character with shades of smarts and complexity beyond a street thug. Their last scene together gives Billy a chance to make a sharp observation about Nick and their situation, one you wouldn’t necessarily expect from him, but Hedlund sells it. In fact, one of the refreshing things about DEATH SENTENCE is that there aren’t a lot of dumb characters (the dumb one dies fairly early on); most everyone is intelligent, and they talk and act accordingly. What a nice change.


But, as mentioned before, it’s all about the Bacon. Watching his expressions and demeanor change from happy family man to grieving father to fear-struck all the way through to Terminator is like a short class in acting. The heartbreak of the situation is that, even while Nick is traveling to his figurative dark side of the moon in grief and rage, he retains his reason, and knows he’s in the moral wrong. By movie’s end, Nick is ravaged with scars and blood, wounded (probably mortally) and is nearly broken under the burden of guilt for his actions and mistakes, and it’s all in his eyes and body language. Bacon sells it completely, even the moments where reality has been smoothed over to fit the story (there’s a fight in a parking garage that strained my credulity a little), and he does it without breaking an actorly sweat. Nick Hume never tells us that violence and vengeance are wrong, but his actions make it clear. The movie’s theme (echoed so well in David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) is maybe a touch ironic, given that the director of this film gave us SAW and the beginning of the modern “torture porn” trend, but it’s one worth hearing. I don’t know that I could stand to see it again, but I’m glad I saw it.