Take a quick glance at James Wan’s 2007 thriller Death Sentence and you might assume it was a thinly disguised rip-off of popular 1970s potboiler Death Wish. Look a little more closely and it turns out to be much closer to the real deal: the film officially adapts Brian Garfield’s 1975 novel Death Sentence – the sequel to his original Death Wish novel. Added to that frisson of authenticity is a wildly exploitative presentation of gun violence that would make Death Wish director Michael Winner proud. You could criticise Wan for the gratuitous, sleazy violence, but you could never accuse him of pretending Death Sentence was something it was not.

Business executive Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is witness to his oldest son dying in a gang initiation. When he takes justice into his own hands, he sparks a spiralling tit-for-tat war for revenge with the gang leader (Garrett Hedlund), endangering his own wife (Kelly Preston) and child (Jordan Garrett).

In all fairness, the narrative in Death Sentence does not make an awful lot of sense. Characters are given motivations to match desired actions, rather than the other way around. It takes alarmingly little provocation to push each of them into committing murder. When their violent outbursts erupt, it is seemingly always without witnesses, passers-by, or even neighbours. It would be a stretch to claim that the film glorifies violence, but it sure as certain fails to condemn it either. It is in many ways akin to Wan’s career-making debut Saw (2004): confrontational content designed to shock and horrify, with an almost gleeful interest in blood and gore.

Poor scripting and story is ably countered by a great lead performance from Kevin Bacon. Bacon remains a true craftsperson of popular cinema, always delivering a thoughtful, well-developed performance no matter the source material. If the audience here finds a shred of sympathy for or engagement with Nick Hume, it is because Bacon inspired it. He is immediately watchable, a talent he shares with co-star John Goodman – here playing a seedy gun dealer with a secret.

Others do not handle the material quite so well. Garrett Hedlund finds himself stuck playing a number of rote street gang stereotypes, similar to Kelly Preston’s role as ‘concerned wife’. Broadly speaking, the cast get very little material with which to play, leaving the bulk of the film perched heavily on Bacon’s shoulders.

It is imperfect cinema, but for fans of these kinds of action-focused revenge thrillers there is certainly enough to entertain, and to paper over the failures of the screenplay (credited to Ian Mackenzie Jeffers). General viewers may find it all a bit too unpleasant to bother. It does have a nice grainy patina to it, courtesy of cinematographer John R. Leonetti. It captures the violent cynicism of the mid-1970s very well. On the other hand, it is just unpleasantly bleak, and regularly rather silly, and it’s leaving the audience to make judgements on what is right and wrong.