From the novelist who spawned Death Wish (1974) comes another story of vigilante justice that'll make you want to hurt someone. Anyone. But preferably director James Wan. It's no surprise after the eye-rolling extremes of Saw that this thriller is also a hack-job. What makes it more aggravating to watch, though, is Wan's pretence at Shakespearean tragedy. This basically amounts to Kevin Bacon going bat poop crazy like Charles Bronson, and then crying about it.

A twisted tale starts off innocuously with corporate exec Nick (Bacon) playing the all-American dad to a family of cardboard cliches. Then he runs out of gas in the wrong part of town (wouldn't you know it!) and his favourite son Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) promptly gets offed in a gang initiation ritual. Wan can't resist getting in amongst the nastiness, but it's really nothing compared to what Nick does to the gang-banging teens responsible for the murder.

"ALL THE SUBTLETY OF A PUMP-ACTION SHOTGUN"

Initially there's at least a vague feeling of credibility as Nick finds himself sucked into a hellish, gang underworld. But after getting his first bitter taste of revenge, the suited-and-booted family man abruptly turns into a slightly better-groomed John Rambo. Wan cuts the action purely for thrills, relishing choreographed moments of ridiculous feats like Nick vaulting over a car as it dives off the top of a multi-storey car park. Bacon, usually watchable in anything, becomes more irritating with every tear shed. Such flimsy moments of regret are rendered totally limp by Aisha Tyler's po-faced policewoman. She exists merely to dispense platitudes with all the subtlety of a pump-action shotgun. So much violence and precious little insight just deadens the nerves.

Death Sentence is out in the UK on 31st August 2007.