Where's the Bacon

This I believe: Kevin Bacon needs to be in more movies. He's a pleasure to watch. He can inhabit characters effortlessly. Sometimes he still looks like he's 23. So when I first saw the trailers for Death Sentence (and dear readers, you know how I love a revenge film), I was Ex. Cit. Ed. Even when I knew Kelly Preston was cast as the wife, it did not deter me from the ticket window. Sadly, this I also believe: save your $$ for the rental.
This movie has so many great ingredients: a (really) perfect family, ferocious violence, a parent willing to risk everything in the name of his child. Unfortunately for Kevin, in this mishandled screenplay/soupcon, the result is a mushy, yucky stew.
One night as dad and eldest son are enjoying time together, the family's suburban sensibility is destroyed by the murder of the son by a pack of no-goodniks out for a thrill kill. It's a brutal scene, but powerful. The perpetrator is easily captured (he gets delayed at the scene of the crime as a result of being hit by a car), identified, and brought before a judge. Yet because Bacon's character disagrees with the notion of a plea bargain, he suddenly turns vigilante. And not in the clumsy, carelessly naive fashion that most wounded suburban fathers would employ; apparently this dad has so quickly embraced the darkness within him that he can stab, outrun, and throwdown on a half-dozen meth heads half his age.
It would have been so interesting (and not difficult) if the screenwriters would have added some dimension to the young man who killed Bacon's son. It would have been interesting if there had been more attention paid to the younger brother's awkward grief - his parents literally abandon him to it - after all, this was the perfect family, they would have talked about their feelings. And it certainly would have been interesting to give Bacon some opportunity to show that he had a bad ass hiding inside before he suddenly showed up ready to manhandle a pump action shotgun and 4 pound cannon stuffed in his waistband.
A little p.s. on product placement: with all the car grills that get shoved at the audience, it's perfectly evident the Ford Motor Co. was a silent partner in this film. Bacon drives a new 500 (even though it's from a Fusion he gets his tire iron to whack a bad guy), a Taurus goes off a roof, even the bad guys have a primo souped up Shelby fastback. Screw subliminal. Buy American!