I just watched
Death Sentence and I'm going to post my thoughts, but included in them are spoilers, so read at your own risk.
**************SPOILERS**************
On the whole, the film was a little more realistic when you think about it, but at the same time, to appreciate that degree of realism, you need to suspend belief a little too much. I thought it was realistic the way Kevin Bacon didn't just all of a sudden turn on the Charles Bronson switch and start blowing people away. He killed one guy (the man who actually killed his kid) and then the gang retaliated. He's just a normal guy on the run from these thugs, and not until they bust in and attempt to kill them all (they only end up killing the wife. Bacon lives and so does his other kid, which is one of the parts where you need to suspend your belief) does he go on a rampage.
The problems I had with it, though, are, I guess, typical in this kind of film. Nevertheless, they were quite annoying.
1) The way the kid dies is him and Bacon are at a gas station and a group of masked guys bust in. They shoot the clerk and then one of the gang members needs to kill the kid as an initiation. He's got a machete and he slices the kid. Now why he didn't stab him is anybody's guess, but how the kid got to keep his head is beyond me, and what's more, the kid doesn't even die right away, and what's
more, Bacon got him to the hospital before he bled out. It just reeked of s(c)ripted drama.
2) When Bacon goes to kill the guy who killed his kid, it's incredibly stupid. He goes armed with a knife, and when he corners the guy in the back of a shithole apartment, not only does he not have the knife out ready to go. . .he doesn't even pull it out. He just grabs the guy and starts bashing his head against a dumpster and they have to fight for a while, then Bacon loses the knife, then they start "grappling" (since this is a MMA forum, I have to put the word grappling in quotes since it's not the BJJ we know and love) and finally Bacon sticks him. Why didn't he just walk up and stab him?
3) In a chase through the city with the gang hot on Bacon's trail, there are as many missed shots as a typical Schwarzenegger scene. Also, despite the high-intensity chase and the shooting and the fighting, none of the gang members are even remotely out of breath, much less sweating, yet Kevin Bacon looked like he was going to keel over. Now I understand that a bunch of built thugs would logically be in better shape than an executive, but still. . .at least take a few deep breaths.
4) John Goodman was in it. Enough said.
5) Kevin Bacon had more fucking lives than a cat. Seriously: Seagal not getting killed in the beginning of
Hard to Kill is an easier pill to swallow than some of the scenes in this movie.
On the whole, I'd probably give it a 5 or 6 out of 10, and while there are some things I appreciated in terms of bringing a healthy dose of reality to the film (the main point of note being when Bacon is loading up for the final showdown and he's reading the instructions on how to load his .357 Magnum, he's losing bullets, he can't finagle the shotgun, etc.) there was a little too much suspension of belief for my taste.
I'll take
Judgment Night any day
Along with
Death Sentence, I also got
There Will Be Blood. I still can't believe I haven't seen the film, but I finally got it and I'll post about it once I watch it in the next couple of days.