Death Sentence (2007)

Death Sentence is the latest Kevin Bacon opus. It's a grim, nasty vigilante/revenge film that's a lot of fun if you like that kind of thing. Bacon stars as Nick Hume, a risk assessor whose rational world view and comfortable, middle-class existence is shattered when his son is the victim of a random killing at a ghetto gas station. He decides to take matters into his own hands by killing the gangbanger responsible for his son's death, but things don't quite turn out the way that he had imagined. The movie awkwardly tries to make some kind of half-assed statement about class difference, but it's a pretty vacuous and illogical film at the end of the day. It is, however, quite gripping and pleasingly bleak: unlike most movies these days, this is not a film where you should expect a happy ending with the dysfunctional family getting back together in recognition of the fact that they really love one another. It also features a strong, off-the-deep-end central performance from Bacon; and John Goodman adds some enjoyably theatrical gusto to his poorly written character.

The film is mostly aiming to resurrect the style and attitude of seventies-era vigilante/revenge cinema: e.g. Walking Tall (1973), Death Wish (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Walking the Edge (1980), Death Wish II (1981), Ms. 45 (1981), Vigilante (1983). In particular, it is based on the sequel to the novel of Death Wish; the final sequence of the film borrows rather too heavily from from Taxi Driver; and the poster art takes its cues from Walking Tall (click image to enlarge). The pleasures of Death Sentence in this regard are of a second-hand nature, but it got me thinking a little bit about why I find these films pleasurable in the first place.

Vigilante and revenge films are often labeled right-wing fantasies: the individualistic, macho, white male protects what is his through violent revenge. The justice system is ineffective and operates like a nanny state for criminals, giving the bad guys more rights than the victims. This is certainly true of many of the aforementioned revenge films, but I think the politics of these films go deeper than this surface reading. In many ways, they are all modern westerns. The western as a genre usually focused on the tension between a lawless frontier and a building of civilization. Different westerns propose different interpretations of how those tensions played out in the foundational myths of America. For example, the final shot of The Searchers – arguably the most famous shot of any western – has John Wayne walking away from the camera and out into the wilderness, with the shot framed through an open doorway. In other words, our point-of-view is from inside the house, from within civilization; Wayne has proven by this point that he has no place within, and must take his place on the outside of civilization instead.

In vigilante/revenge movies, a similar set of tensions form the core of the narratives, only now we are in the present day. The laws and rules of civilization are presented as having failed us; the police protect the criminals. The lone vigilante, usually a mild-mannered, middle-class guy who's been playing by the rules until the rules have failed him, is a figure who snaps and comes to embody the pre-civilized qualities of the animal or the gunslinger or the warrior. He enters a heterotopic space on the outskirts of the civilized world, and he represents a return of the things that middle-class American society has repressed. He becomes a fierce beast demanding some kind of moral center in a society that's gone out-of-whack. (It is perhaps no coincidence that these films have mostly been popular during corrupt Republican presidencies!)

Death Sentence is a good example of this tradition, with Bacon's rational world view slowly unraveling, revealing his flaws as a father and husband, as well as his inner animal. I think it is this set of tensions that interests me in revenge movies. Even in the revenge films that skew more to the right in their politics, this basic set of tensions still leaves ample ambiguity and richness for liberal lefties like myself to enjoy.