James Wan directs Kevin Bacon, Garret Hedlund and John Goodman in this yuppie turns vigilante after a gang randomly murders his son in an initiation killing.

Made back before Wan became a box office behemoth with the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, this oft compelling B Movie amps up a Death Wish basis with his own Saw aesthetic. The opening half hour establishing Bacon’s Risk Analyst’s love of finding order in the chaos and idyllic family life (what sounds awfully like Christian Rock abounds) takes the wind out our sails a little but then scenes of escalating violence and threat occur that reveal a callous disregard for keeping key characters alive. Once you realise no one is untouchable the movie has quite a cutting energy. Wan shows off when he can (he’s the current master of building tension then maintaining it even after big shocks), most of the low budget must have been splurged into an on-foot chase that relentlessly follows Bacon along endless alleyways, kitchens and the various floors of a carpark structure. Bacon also is grand as the man out of his depth who eventually dehumanises himself to the gang’s level to settle the score. Shame the naughty boys themselves seem to have come straight out of a particularly PC comic book rather than having any basis in reality. You almost wish the scenes where they interact were sliced out and you just feared them for their frankly terrifying actions. Pluses and minuses tallied up: Death Sentence occasionally outgrows its own throwaway nature but never consistently flourishes, yet there are a hell of a lot of worse ways to spend a Friday night if you can stomach it all.

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