L'Immortel

 

Perhaps better known within the Western continents as 22 Bullets, L'Immortel is based loosely around the real life events of Jacky Le Mat, a mafioso who was shot 22 times and left for dead. As you can most likely assume, Le Mat survived and exacted bloody revenge on his assailants. As far as I can tell, this exposure of the "Revenge of the Professional" will no doubt draw comparisons to Vincent Cassel's Mesrine crime epic but allow me to assure you that in no way, shape, or form are these two films to be connected or juxtaposed aside from the country of origin and a sweeping tale of true crime reincarnated via cinema. My hopes for L'Immortel were exceedingly substantial after seeing a true return to form from Vincent Cassel at damn near his best and I could only hope the same for the Moroccan titan, Jean Reno. Sadly, L'Immortel never fully recognizes its potential until too late, giving us a sub-par film that secures its lead actor's potential a bit too far in. 

Picking up with a quiet prelude was the smart and reasonable way to open this film of a bloodthirsty retiree; bloodthirsty being implied as Charly Matteï's bloody roots are never looked fiercely upon save for a single flashback scene of a youthful assassination. As Charly picks up his son from the grandmothers house, Reno gives us the same semblance of a giddy killer as seen and recycled from Leon: The Professional. One of several reasons why the film substitutes the need for plot consistency is due to Jean Reno's quirky and charming performance as a quiet, hulking killer with a heart of euphoric gold. After enjoying the company of his son, Charly lets him out of the car to explore a festival while he parks the car. Proceeding an overture of opera, a black unmarked van pulls up and 8 masked men get out with weapons drawn. Shot after shot, bullet after bullet, is buried in Jean Reno's body with a brutality unmatched by most crime films. Facial tearing and fleshy squib, L'Immortel opens up with a lit fuse waiting for the foundation to blast open and once it does, the onslaught of incredible editing and seamless violence becomes intertwined with the frustrating and mundane. 

Key scene being the surgery and in this scene we are introduced to the characters running the film and motivations, the aforementioned 22 bullets. Voltage peaks at scene of slug removal - lead like candy. Metal dish stained red delicious with a heaving mound of clinking confections. Words that come to mind when this scene takes place. I had never thought my mind would so vividly explode with imagination as it did with Jean Reno's comatose body on a hospital gurney. 22 Bullets might forever be known as the "little thriller that couldn't" but it remains a career necessity and a stunning evolution of Jean Reno as a bad ass with a heart and serves as a prime weight on his character alignment scale. While I can appreciate all forms of the man's kindness, his entries of Crimson Rivers, Empire of the Wolves, and now, 22 Bullets, really help to even out his contributions of family friendly adult entertainment including Godzilla, The Big Blue, The Pink Panther, and For Roseanna. Marketing this film to an American audience is what the split personality of 22 Bullets has in mind. France has it right with a sprawling cityscape overshadowed by a near-crippled marauding mafioso. American audiences are instead treated with the poster concept of a tacky lookalike to that of a straight-to-DVD Al Pacino machine. Vending machine quality and all. The tag-line "Revenge of the Professional" is misconstrued in an attempt to market this film to fans of Leon: The Professional and the reoccurring affinity for classical music. Hook, line, sinker?

No matter what you hear, L'Immortel is simply and ethically one of those films in which the only opinion you can holster is your own. From someone who has an endearing appreciation for all of Jean Reno's line of work and bloody crime thrillers, L'Immortel is a bittersweet film caressing the honor system supposed in most of these killers in their call of duty. Jean Reno turns over an excellent and versatile performance as a wicked murderer not to be fucked with. Within his smile and wrinkles, his face tells a tale that every movie fleshes out. Behind wise eyes lurks a terrific character actor that accommodates real life emotion with a harrowing efficiency. Sadly, L'Immortel becomes ensnared by loose ends and patented revenge devices in such a way that the only real saving grace is the keen brutality and jolting violence. To quote Uzi Joe on the subject of Jean Reno's tears, "Each tear is a thousand souls of weaker men who died trying to gain his powers." Fantasy put to the side, I believe him.

-mAQ

Nigger Lover

To review this film under its intended title is my main priority. To point out its reverse bottlecap propaganda is my second. Given the nature of this film and its history, Nigger Lover, also lovingly known as Tom, The Bad Bunch, and The Brothers, is a film directed by a civil rights activist turned schlock maestro. As per his unusual occupation, Nigger Lover is a film that gets all too confused in conveying which message it supports. Consider the branching extensions of this film universal. You can plug and play this film into any meaning or racial ultimatum which also happens to do something for the swept sake at stake. This is the film that they didn't want you to see, with reason enough however. Nigger Lover is a film wrapped up in its own lost ideology and features a sympathetic look at the white man and dealing with many pig-headed and angry "niggas" as the "bad bunch" cavorts around the streets with intention to harm "Whitey." Nigger Lover surely is the pièce de résistance of Greydon Clark's expansive gutter career. I support independent idealism transgressed to film but the only thing Clark's created of social importance is regrettably this anchored look at the fabled "aggression gene" present in all blacks.

Restoring my faith within the cracked-black case of cassettes and the corroded picturesque look at materialism in the age of exploitation, Nigger Lover starts centering itself within the conversation of a black and white GI stationed in Vietnam (but is obviously shot in a neighbor's backyard). After discussing what they believe home to be like, the wise black man begins to say that the war is still going back home and that he knows the answer on how to stop ebony & ivory confrontations and bring peace to all sides. Lucky for us he is suddenly and humorously shot and utters a violent scream before he can whisper the secret vaccine for Helter Skelter. Bringing a letter back home for his fallen friend's family, he encounters a brother reeking of soul who approaches with incredible hostility. It's our dearly departed soldier's brother name of Tom. But don't call him by his slave name, his name is now "Makimba." Along springs his gang of groovy, white-women stealing soul brothers and after utilizing some heavy intimidation tactics, Jim decides to cut his losses and leaves. Makimba, having nothing to do with Jim's lack of confrontation, decides to assault him at an ethnic fair before two "corrupt" detectives break it up waving their pistols around and calling Jim a "Nigger Lover" after claiming Makimba is his friend, obviously to extinguish any more violence from the Negroes.

As you can expect, a campaign of disinformation is thrust upon the sexually-frustrated Jim. While the camera hops between an endless void of interracial nudity and forced repressed ethnic ideals, Jim brings around a heavy aura of indecisiveness while he hops between the love of his life, Nancy (I think I recall that they've been dating for "2 months"), and some barfly hooker named Bobbie. To beef up the story devices of this film and the jolting ending, Clark sets out to humanize Jim but fails halfway and creates a socially incompetent Frankenstein of faults and idiosyncrasies. While drunk later in the film, he proposes to the bubble-headed Nancy out of reverse-engineered hostility towards her decision to not move in with him because of Sin as a deciding factor. So after the plans and arrangements are set, he makes a progressive decision to possibly not go through with the marriage, thus sparking a several minute long conversation with the priest about the sanctity of marriage. Necessary scene or a clever time divergent? Assessing the run time of Nigger Lover at a measly hour and thirteen or so minutes, I suppose this film could use every cutting room floor scene in a final last ditch effort to achieve feature length before a certain deadline.

When you take the poster image of a prone negro holstering a rifle at a fleeing white couple, you can no doubt theorize that this film image is one of the near end shocks of agonizing still-life and the unquestionable lives taken on account of ignorance. Although Makimba had the right to protest and attest the vicious beatings at the hands of the two "pigs", such wonderful lines came out of their confrontations e.g. "Niggers sure bleed!" Of course, no film countering the image of blaxploitation could be without its very own scenes of Jewish discretion! At a pool party, Makimba and his beasts patiently await the arrival of Jim, as they are visiting as his "friends." In the meantime, the bull Negro of the lot decides to mingle with the white women, topless of course. After stealing all the white women with his superior masculinity, the giant picks up a tiny white male and begins to have the females goad the inferior White's size calling him "little man" and "tiny." This infuriates Makimba as he sees this pool turn into a integrated cesspool of spoiled races mixing with such fervor that his devious pose & stare become all the more aggressive with each passing frame. In no time, as the party picks up and the whites become more settled with their chocolate counterparts, one grabs the arm of one of the militants, provoking an angry reaction. Fearing for his safety, he babbles "Is he anti-Semitic or something?" which garners the response "if he iss, we ALLL in trouble!"

What Nigger Lover accomplishes is providing a sleazy shell for some disturbingly true stereotypes. These soul militants provide excellent opposition to the weakling Vietnam veteran but to some degree, also dampen the credibility of the constant peace talks from Jim. Trying to take the higher ground dug this Honky in deeper trouble than he originally planned and by the time the credits roll with image and sound intact, we hardly mourn the fate of our white brother. It's yet another casualty of not doing something sooner and elongating the process of physical contact. For scenes of white police officers seeming unfazed by a mention of a murder plot against a white man, only to suddenly become enraged when hearing they were kidnapping white women, Nigger Lover provides many hilarious sociopolitical thematic elements and enough subversive VHS sleaze to keep a jaded blaxploitation treasure hunter at ease for the time being. If you can handle the atrocious and flimsy editing, that is. Might I add that this is not nearly as anti-white as the original intentions set out to engrave upon the face of exploitation. In the end, Nigger Lover stands triumphant as nigger kitsch.

-mAQ

12 and Holding

I can only imagine that youth nowadays have a hard time finding a decent coming-of-age film. Hollywood seems most interested in sexualizing youngsters as well as indoctrinating them with a slave morality where the weak is looked at as good (especially poor, modernly mythical ghetto Jews and disenfranchised Negroes) and the strong as evil (and don't forget usually "racist") rather than providing them with quality entertainment.  No longer will there be films like Monster Squad where kids call other kids "faggots" for such words are borderline hate speech. Also, one should not expect many kids movies with strong Nordic heroes wiping out dark and slimy scum.  If one wants to see a quality coming-of-age films nowadays, it is going to have to be subversive and borderline morally bankrupt, the kind of film that kids probably should not see. 12 and Holding, directed by Michael Cuesta, is such a film; a sin-filled and not-so-sunny motion picture featuring kids killing other kids. Cuesta is probably best known for his hurdy-gurdy masterpiece L.I.E., a film featuring a young teen who takes on a Pedo named Big John as a father figure. With 12 and Holding, Cuesta once again proves he is proficient at directing films about juveniles that no parent would want to see nor think about.

The children in 12 and Holding are a group of young and upcoming degenerates. Jacob has a disgusting birthmark on his face and a recently deceased twin brother who his parents loved more, Leonard is an obese lump of turd, and Carla is a 1/2 Asian girl who has a thing for adult men. It seems all these 12 year old kids are united by their early disdain for life and most of humanity. All of these preteens also suffer some type of existential crisis with some of the children more conscious of their problems than others. All the children also take extreme measures in attempting to correct their problems. For example, young Carla thinks that breaking into an adult male friend's apartment and surprising him in the nude would be the best way to correct her father-less void. Lardo Leonard thinks by locking his disgustingly obese mother in the basement and forcing her to eat fruit/vegetables that he will force Miss Piggy to lose some weight. I guess children sometimes have ridiculous solutions to their problems, but one must respect them for their passionate audacity.  

12 and Holding was shot on Super 16mm film which certainly adds to the film's realism. The scenarios featured in the film may sometimes seem exaggerated and unheard of, but I am sure similar situations play out more often in American society than one would want to admit. I believe a lot of kids in the city start pushing crack around age 12 and the girls start shooting out worthless eaters around the same age too. The somewhat prudish preteens of 12 and Holding are not yet keen on the same recreations as their fellow city youth but they certainly have their own poison of abuse. Chances are if you're 12 years or younger the film will likely give your nightmares but then again, so will Anne Frank and Barney. 

-Ty E

No Mercy

 

Swallowing grit, I decided to watch and review a newer Korean film from the same company that brought us the manic youth transpiring in Attack the Gas Station! Even though these films have nothing to do with each other other than country of origin, I feel that this noted was better than just jumping headfirst into discussing the wildly fluctuating events that occur within the confines of this newer Korean thriller. No Mercy, much like A Bittersweet Life, Truck, Mother, The Chaser, and Memories of Murder, is another excellent K-thriller displaying the exploitative world of Korean crime as popularized in cinema. A steadfast picture without the help of such blockbuster faces of Byung-hun Lee or Kang-ho Song, No Mercy gets right into the jugular at merely the halfway mark and never lets go, not even past the rolling credits. Even though I continue to be in a concise state of duress after my viewings of such emotionally hampering films, it appears I can still channel human emotion into an addressable manner, which is nice.

No Mercy centers around two characters and neither one of them is more important than the other to the fruition of the tale; the only questionable difference is that one of them has more to lose. Sul Kyung-gu is a top forensic investigator who now lives a quiet life waiting for the arrival of his daughter who was in the United States for reasons unexplained at the time. As he dabbles in odd cases and gives advice to the detectives in charge, this does well with establishing a very real connection to the police station and dividing him apart from these unbeatable detective heroes. Min-ho's involvement in a murder case committed by an environmental activist becomes all the more personal when he is handed an envelope while at the airport containing pictures of his kidnapped daughter. Now in order for him to ever see his daughter again, the killer demands to be released in 3 days in turn for her safe carriage. This is where No Mercy turns from typical police drama into a young, rebellious vehicle for insistent evidence tampering, which is a very cool departure from your casual search-and-seizure operations via cinema. I'm looking at you, CSI and Law and Order.

In a radical and idiotic move, No Mercy has been centering itself around its visceral climax entirely, as if to discredit the incredibly paced previous events. Heralding the ending by comparing it to Oldboy's is a blunder on their part. Giving the audience expectations and predictability is exactly what is wrong with modern cinema. Going into a film blind to what may or may not occur is a rarity these days, what, with all the suburbanites checking reviews and ratings with their fancy smart-phones. There might as well be an app for spoilers. Another critical mishap in the same vein was the shot-by-shot remake of [Rec], Quarantine, which featured the final shot of the film not only in the trailer, but as the theatrical poster. No Mercy is a film that stands true to its title, as most films seem to nowadays. Disaster Movie was a disaster, Dead Calm was a quiet thriller, The Other Guys is a film concerning people that I don't care about, and No Mercy doesn't particularly care about any character by the sudden end of this diabolical over-stylized "horror" film.

When the ending does piece itself together after some frantic rogue detective work, the results will be vicious and will incite a session of brainstorming much needed. With all the previous events that transpired, one must pause the film or to seek in retrospect, all preceding scenes and realize the gravity of the situation that these characters were lured into. While I may be considered a hypocrite for bringing to light the banal state of the industry and its pilfering of cinematic curveballs, I had no choice but to face and attack this blatant mimicry of the artistry of the photoplay. For what it is worth, No Mercy isn't one of the Korean masterpieces that I hoped it would be but due to the complexity of the "big reveal" and the chemistry between the antagonist and protagonist, this comes out as a clever, murder-charged spectacle that is easy on the eyes, as are most budgeted Korean films however. It's just a shame that the creators feel the need to reference the "shocking" ending as a selling point for their already-gifted film.

-mAQ

Dead Calm

 

Having to be reminded of Billy Zane's psycho-spree dailies from a chance encounter with a mint VHS edition in the community thrift store, I set out to watch Dead Calm the day I bought, if not for Billy Zane, then surely for Sam Neill. As you know without my sentiments regarding the topic of Dr. Alan Grant, Neill has turned role after role into something intelligent and quasi-masculine, even archetypes that shouldn't drop machismo. From an insurance fraud investigator to paleontologist, Sam Neill chisels his own persona out of this generally "nerdy" classifications and brings a wit and charisma to even the most absent character given in a screen play. Dead Calm is further proof of this when John (Neill) is stranded on a sinking boat of a past crew that were slaughtered by an emotionally-imbalanced Billy Zane, who has now commandeered his vessel along with his wife and left him to die. As you can tell by my impromptu synopsis, this is a dame flick but one that does very little justice for their cries for sincerity. 

Dead Calm was directed by Phillip Noyce, an Australian director known throughout for his espionage and politically charged suspense films and sadly, not for Dead Calm. Once sight breaks of an exhausted male figure adorned with a cowboy hat, Sam Neill uses his scarcely explained experience in nautical military action to navigate the "dingy" back to the ship from whence Hughie (Zane) came, even after the delirious stranger begs him not to go as all six crew members died of "food poisoning."  Things turn for the worse, specifically for Jon, when he opens a sealed door and the crew floods in with their perky, bare breasts buoyant against the rushing seawater escaping; the focused subject of our voyeuristic perverted cameraman while he captures all the "action" necessary for the arousal of the more seasoned deviants of cinema.

To switch lanes completely and in such a juvenile manner, one of the reasons I found The Mist to be an excellent and effective survival-horror film might have had something to do with the harmonizing soundtrack. The quick and jarring operatic vocals in tune with the crashing waves within Dead Calm allow so much atmosphere to stick to what could just be another extra ordinary thriller with the acting talents of two of cinema's greatest leading men and a popular slut. One of Dead Calm's greatest aesthetic strengths is the music leaving much to be desired from the lonely, rocking sea. Noyce doesn't bring anything new to the table by representing our ocean mother with his existing character artistry. To personify the crashing waves and eerie emptiness might require someone who has more of a penchant for environmental manipulation and not just Harrison Ford agenda films. To spin back to the inclusion of a now-popular slut as the lead heroine, I'd like to take this otherwise simple film and tread it into even darker waters.

Many of you who have seen the film are aware of the sexual insanity of the later mark in which Rae is "seduced" by Hughie after many failed attempts at distracting him long enough to reverse the boat's direction. With hopes to save her husband from the ticking time-bomb that is a sinking ghost ship, she becomes distracted with his rippling pecs and abs and finds herself in a naked embrace on their bed. When the dog stumbles in the door and stares at her curiously, Kidman finds it in her female nature to attempt to get up with intentions to put the dog away. Hughie shushes her and scares the beast away, only for it to return moments later. As the dog stares, one could assume this as an ample opportunity to assist in leashing the hell hound and preventing the slaughter of Rae's good intentions. But as this is the movies and these films tend to carry nonfictional accounts of womanly behavior, she gives in to his pulsing libido as they form a passionate coupling. Edit this atrocious sex scene with snipes of Sam Neill fighting for his life and you got yourself a real buzz kill. Nice going, Rae. You singlehandedly killed your marriage and my respect for you.

Asides from the raw dog Straw Dogs approach to questionable lust, Dead Calm remains with a mood that the title properly instills. It's a slowly paced thriller, not one of thrilling segments involving high-velocity chase sequences, but rather a demented sociopath suffering all forms of mother issues as his sanity and true intentions slowly unfold. Nicole "Whore" Kidman brings together a nice early performance as a woman escaping from the memory of ejecting her son through the windshield in high volume traffic, probably as the result of texting her BFF. While this is never really looked back upon as the film picks up, Kidman plays the near exact role she did in Birthday Girl - quiet, melodramatic, and pretty stupid. Much of the films frustrating moments come from either the asshole dog that you can't wait to be killed off or Kidman's inability to grab a knife or weapon. This is made increasingly agitating given that this isn't a hostage situation and the freedom Billy Zane allows her on the boat is overwhelming. Dead Calm is made possible on accounts of Billy Zane's wonderful performance and Sam Neill's persistence to save his wife who is busy bedding down with a serial killer. But hey, you can't tell me you wouldn't sleep with Billy Zane had you the chance. 

-mAQ

Total Eclipse

Arthur Rimbaud was the greatest and most revolutionary poet of his time in part because unlike most artists, he was not a member of the bourgeois class.  As the degenerate French philosopher Foucault once mentioned, Rimbaud's mother came from the peasant class and eagerly wanted to become part of the bourgeois.  She constantly treated Rimbaud as a potential criminal, instilling a sense of guilt in the young poet that would no doubt have an influence on the decadent poet's prose.  Rimbaud felt that he was "exempt from all morality" and lived a short life of wandering decadence.  In the film Total Eclipse directed by Agnieszka Holland, the most creative period of Rimbaud's life is chronicled as well his eventual downfall after struggling with a form of cancer the resulted in the amputation of  his leg.  Despite his highly influential and revolutionary contribution to the art of poetry, Arthur Rimbaud completely quit writing by the age of 21 and died at the young age of 37.  Surely not a long life, but his artistic contributions to the world can be matched by very few. 

I had some reservations when I found out Leonard DiCaprio played the role of Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse.  Of course, DiCaprio did a fine and believable job playing a energetic retard in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?  Unfortunately for Leo, his reputation is largely based (or at least was) on the awakening sexuality of prepubescent girls and less based on his actual talent as a serious actor.  After watching Total Eclipse, it is quite apparent DiCaprio was the right man for the job in regards to playing Rimbaud.  Despite being part of a decadent artistic circle, Rimbaud was known for even offending his fellow poets and artists.  In Total Eclipse, Rimbaud states of a group of fellow French poets that they are "more bourgeois than the bourgeois" and he was right.  Where he differed from his contemporaries is that he saw no limits and no boundaries, hence why he broke new ground in poetry.  In Total Eclipse, Leonardo DiCaprio is quite young and even more of a smart ass.  In fact, throughout the film, DiCaprio's character becomes rather annoying, displaying a certain hostile and improperly channeled form of energy that was only best expressed in Rimbaud's poetry. 

The main plot behind Total Eclipse is Arthur Rimbaud's relationship with the older poet Paul Verlaine.  Despite being much older than Rimbaud, Verlaine is a weaker poet and man.  In fact, Verlaine is such a weak man that he allows Rimbaud to ruin his family and marriage, on top of being sodomized by the younger poet.  It is clear from the start of Total Eclipse that the artistically superior teenage Rimbaud uses Verlaine for his money which allows the two men to travel the world together.  The very ugly Paul Verlaine (played without shame by David Thewlis) is obviously in love with the young Arthur Rimbaud.  Rimbaud never returns the love, but instead taunts Verlaine for his mediocrity and ugliness, eventually driving him to the verge of insanity and even attempted murder.  The greatest gifts Rimbaud gave to the world were with his hands so it was quite fitting that the drunk Paul Verlaine would shoot him in one of those poetic hands.  The chemistry between DiCaprio and Thewlis during these various dramatic and sometimes brutal scenes is certainly powerful to say the least, making one feel the urge to take a break from the film various times to emotionally collect oneself.  It is sad to think that DiCaprio had more chemistry with David Thewlis than he did with Kate Winslet in Titanic but I guess that is the magic of the movies.

  In a letter to a friend, Rimbaud once stated, "I am condemned; have always been, forever."  That single sentence briefly tells the autobiography of the decadent poet's short life.  The older poet Paul Verlaine would never truly win over his young friend, but at the conclusion of Total Eclipse he seems to come to terms with this by realizing he was probably the man who best understood and respected the work of Arthur Rimbaud.  Seeing as Rimbaud's work was already superior to Verlaine's in his teenage years, his life would also eclipse that of his older friend, leaving the older man to die alone in a drunken stupor.  During the conclusion of the film, Paul Verlaine sits pathetically at a bar drunk on absinthe imagining the young Arthur Rimbaud sitting in front of him.  Rimbaud's early death was only appropriate for no one could ever keep up with him but he was also marked as the first to go, surely the tragedy of a great poet.

-Ty E

Death Sentence

What can be said about Death Sentence that isn't already expressed with a single image of a bloody and bruised Kevin Bacon? This image has become somewhat iconic for me granted I've revisited Death Sentence for the third time in under a week. His frail figure wields a shotgun with every intention of retribution in this stunning remake of Brian Garfield's Death Wish series that surpasses everything that Death Wish never really touched base on; loss and godawful sorrow. Death Sentence is one of those ugly films that creates a textured cityscape of characters and chance encounters while playing god who could be very well listening to aggressive metal. Everything that happens in this film drags a wistful Bacon downwards into a cinematic study of the new and improved, definitive "man with nothing to lose." Coming from the tiny director of the original Saw film, James Wan, Death Sentence is a hell of a surprise and covers rusty milieu and bitter flavors en masse.


Regarding the tact nature of his family's demise, I personally have not seen a film that echoes so heavily the feeling of lonesome as Death Sentence does. It was bad enough losing his golden child to a gang initiation trial hosted by a multicultural troupe of degenerates, but once Kevin Bacon strikes back upon the one who sliced his son's neck open, a war erupts instantaneously. The debris and carnage left behind can be tracked back to two key ingredients that throttled the downfall of this bourgeois household; selfishness and vengeance. Had Kevin Bacon not pursued exacting his own brand of justice upon the runt-like Joe Darley, the rest of his family would have been out of harms way and it would have remained the death of one "rich little faggot." So against all psychological happenstance, Death Sentence is a film that is multi-gendered; on one hand, it's a film about exacting grisly vengeance and on the other hand, a film chronicling the moral decay of a once-family man as he becomes exactly what he swore to punish.


Halfway into the film comes one of cinema's most profound chase sequences committed to celluloid since Children of Men. Escaping on foot with his suitcase wildly waving through the alleys of crust and recycled goods, Nick Hume (Bacon) flees through many buildings while being chased by many tattooed and pierced thugs in a suspense-driven pursuit which leads him to a parking garage. Unable to stop the velocity of his body, he crumples into a car setting off its alarm. Taking this idea and systematically using the same survival instinct we later see in the bloodbath of atonement, he zigzags from car to car setting off their respective beacon in a dazzling attempt to hurdle his foes into a state of bewilderment. It's set-ups like these that make me understand that there is still fresh life to be squeezed into these modern action thrillers. Once the game of cat-and-mouse has desisted, Nick Hume retracts from noticeably upset senior VP to an afflicted lamb scurrying home to try and make reparations for what he has done. The cast of Death Sentence is wildly supportive and over-stricken with sympathy which helps the film establish a credible habitat restrained only by the boundaries of film.


As author Brian Garfield said concerning Death Wish and Charles Bronson's portrayal, "vigilantism is an attractive fantasy but it only makes things worse in reality." These words ring quite true when comparing Death Sentence to its creative predecessor. Also quick to jab at the alleged "blood-and-thunder" that occupies the last twenty minutes, I view this scene of extermination as the meat and the potatoes of the film; not as some violence-prone sweaty nerd but as a man who understands pain and these twangs of emptiness. Nick Hume's final stand is one to be reckoned with, both through the confines of cinema and its regurgitated after-effect. This motion picture is not just one of uncompromising entertainment but a film with a cold heart that pumps the very venom of Hume's absent rage into our visions as this "ostracidal" odyssey continues to tread on the sacred ground of a suburban welcome mat.


Coating its grievous nature with a glorifying epic shoot-out scene is exactly what this film needed to do to separate itself fully from the nature of its depression-inciting music video-like scenes of lamenting. Death Sentence, as a collected product, is a mean-spirited sucker punch delivered swiftly to the abdominal. Often presenting a desecrated family amidst the hum of dreary VH1-infused folk ballads, the instinct of a bloodthirsty beast in incarnated among the labyrinthine hallways of the "Office," the crack-den that looks to be what the safe haven would resemble if Abel Ferrara shot up with junk-used needles while playing Silent Hill. A revamped Death Wish starring the ghostly Kevin Bacon using expletive and ghastly violence in order to purge the streets from the flaccid youth? Sign me up for what might be the best recycling of an idea proving justly that remakes aren't always bad. Just take Death Sentence and Last Man Standing along for a wild ride in resuscitating faith in the ultra-violent and macabre and you'll be overdosing on gun play euphoria in no time.

-mAQ