Eye Candy #168 - "Death Sentence"

Death Sentence: The "middle class man/violent revenge" sub-genre has been around forever and there are about a bajillion examples of "good man pushed to the limit" from your "Death Wishes" to other worse films. "Death Sentence" is firmly in that genre and an absolutely mediocre example. White collar Nick Hume's (Kevin Bacon) son is murdered by criminals and after the system fails to deliver justice, an escalating cycle of violence leads Nick to take things into his own hands, up to and including murdering other people violently. Granted, Hume appears to be going against the Gen-X version of the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, we've got plenty of graphic, brutal violence to go around. Biggest problem - the suspension of disbelief the film requires. For example, there is an open gun battle on a street mid-day downtown...and the police response time is apparently something like thirty minutes as they only showed up at the END of it. So don't live where the protagonist lives - you may not make it out alive. Nothing terrible here, just nothing great either. The direction attempts to be flashy, but the material just isn't strong enough to support it. The 'bad guys' are comically inept and dumb, with John Goodman as the 'godfather' figure comes out best in the film. Woodchuck sez, "Nothing to write home about."