I paid eight bucks the other night to see the new Kevin Bacon revenge flick Death Sentence -- to find out if my wife had made the final cut as an extra.
If anyone else went to see this bucket of mop water of a movie, I don't want to hear your excuse.
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| "'Death Sentence': Protect What's Yours." Yeah, like the $8 in your wallet. (Provided to CBSSports.com) |
This picture was filmed in my home base of Columbia, S.C. At one point, my wife had won a callback to be part of the moving scenery as an office professional at Bacon's insurance company.
I was sentenced to see this movie on my own. The missus can't bear to see movies or TV shows where she knows kids are going to meet brutal ends. Anything worse than Haley Joel Osment being sent to bed without supper, she can't handle it.
Since Death Sentence was directed by the guy who did the original Saw bloodbath -- and the ads make clear Bacon goes on a Charles Bronson Death Wish-like rampage after his family gets wiped out -- she decided to skip this hackwork.
Fortunately, since there is a significant ice hockey component to the plot, I can get away with writing about this movie for a sports column.
As the movie opens, we meet Bacon's teenage son who wants to be a hockey player. Bacon is Mr. White Bread V.P. of an insurance company. On a fateful car ride together one evening, the boy announces he wants to go to college in Canada to pursue a hockey career. Bacon good-naturedly, half-heartedly tries to steer his first-born toward law school.
I think dad should have put up much more of a fight to steer his son away from the ineptly run NHL. "Their TV contract is with a network that goes to so few houses, they might as well thank their remaining fans door to door! Some of their players have Breathalyzer ratings higher than their nationwide TV ratings!"
Anyway, during a stop for gas, the son gets sliced up as part of a gang initiation. Later, as Bacon prepares for what movie advertisements often refer to as a roaring rampage of revenge, he dons a cap embroidered with the name of his son's hockey team.
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| Kelly Preston and co-star Kevin Bacon attend the 'Death Sentence' premiere. (AP) |
And I just inadvertently found a Degrees of Separation connection. Unbelievable! How does Bacon pull that off? Does he get royalties every time that happens?
Back to the review: This movie is bad. I mean, student filmmaker bad. Although the movie is supposed to take place in Anytown, USA, this is now a stupider film featuring something from the Palmetto State than the clip of Miss Teen South Carolina babbling about why Americans can't find the USA on a map.
(And while we're at it, let's leave that poor girl alone. That was a stupid question they asked her in the first place. Why can't people find America on a world map? Maybe they're the same lame-brains who buy DVD collections of Who's the Boss? Ask them.)
The movie is built on a worthless premise, the actors were working with a useless script, and the editors were barely competent at creating anything suspenseful.
Here's an example of how my mind would wander, because there was nothing going on in the film to keep it occupied:
Kelly Preston plays Bacon's wife. Aisha Taylor plays the detective in charge of the case. During the scene where Taylor is at the family's house explaining the dangers of their enemy drug gang ("Did you make war with the wrong dog?" she lectures) I wondered if the movie could have been improved if Aisha Taylor played the wife and Kelly Preston played the bitchy cop.
Or better yet ... what if Aisha Taylor played a good cop, Kelly Preston played a bad cop, and I played the naughty sports writer who was tied upside down in my boxers, and Preston ... oh, wait, this isn't that type of website.
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| John Goodman steals the show as Bones Darley. (Provided to CBSSports.com) |
The exception was John Goodman as manic arms dealer Bones Darley. He had maybe 10 minutes of screen time combined from three scenes. But this character, in a better movie, I swear has the potential to reach iconic status.
To compare it to other Goodman characters: Imagine if Walter Sobchak was the type of guy who would have shot Smokey dead for crossing the line, no questions asked. Or maybe Bones is the evil, demented, soulless (and hairless) twin brother of Sulley from Monsters, Inc.
If I were a film school screenwriting professor, my assignment would be for students to write a treatment for a movie that would do this character justice. I don't care if it's as a protagonist, antagonist, sidekick, narrator, pizza delivery guy, whatever.
Heck, make Bones Darley the coach in Mighty Ducks V. We need more quality hockey movies, since the NHL, NBC and Versus have failed to provide North America with a quality diet of hockey entertainment.
OK, time whip through the rest of my notes:
• The worst part of all this is that my wife did not make the final cut. The elevator scene that she was part of made the movie, but instead of her and another lady leaving the elevator as Edi Gathegi's character gets on, all you see is that bad guy by his lonesome as the doors close. And there I was, leaning forward in my seat, camera phone at the ready to catch my bride's big-screen debut. Well, that's show biz.
• The hockey scenes were filmed at an ice complex that has since been out of business. If a deal to reopen it falls through, I think the abandoned rink should be auctioned on eBay as a piece of movie memorabilia.
• Dear Santa: Please put a Bartholomew Wolves cap in my Christmas stocking. That's the name of the son's hockey team, and it would be cool to salute a hockey club that's more obscure than the Columbus Blue Jackets.
• Since the movie steals so shamelessly from Death Wish and Taxi Driver, I think the Death Sentence filmmakers should have gone for broke and swiped the brilliant battle royale from Running Scared where Paul Walker shoots it out with the mob on a hockey rink bathed in fluorescent lights.
• After the gang flees the scene of the murder of Bacon's older boy, they realize they abandoned the guilty gang member behind. One bad guy rationalizes: "He's a man now. He can take the subway!" Ha ha, the joke's on you, jerk -- there is no subway system in Columbia, S.C.
• Since my wife was paid $50 to show up for a day of work, the Hardy family is still $42 ahead of the game. Thank you, Twentieth Century Fox and Hyde Park Entertainment.
• On a scale of one to five, I'd give Death Sentence three hockey puck slap shots to the groin.
