You can always count on the end of August and most of September to deliver some honest-to-goodness, studio-sanctioned b-movies to multiplexes and James Wan’s latest, the Kevin Bacon-starring revenge saga Death Sentence, is a shining example of such - enough of a budget for some genuine mayhem, competent actors slumming it, bouts of graphic bloodshed… good, good times.

Adapted from “Death Wish” author Brian Garfield’s thematically similar follow-up to said novel (its filmic incarnation a pillar of the revenge genre), Wan really wrings the most visceral excitement possible from a straight-forward story detailing an average man’s (Bacon) descent into vigilantism after the murder of his family.  The thugs Bacon faces off against are a mostly nameless, personality-free lot save for their leader (Garrett Hedlund) and the gang boss, played with vile relish by a cameo-ing John Goodman.

The action is rough and graphic, and several sequences - including a street chase which culminates in an audacious tracking shot through, up, over, and around a parking garage - burn with energy.  Bacon’s eventual switch-flipping is accompanied by an unfortunate “transformation” montage which resorts to tired stylistic touches Wan exhausted back with Saw, but the film jells so well on average such mis-steps are easy to forgive.

Don’t expect any musing on the nature of revenge or violence in Death Sentence - unless pondering which handgun will blast best in which scenario is the type of consideration you’re after.  It’s a fast and flashy b-movie through and through, the kind we fanboys tend to think are gone forever.  Not so.  Definitely worth seeing with the right mindset.