Plot
Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is husband to Helen (Kelly Preston), and father of two boys, Brendan and Lucas. After Brendan's hockey game, Nick and Brendan (Stuart Lafferty), the star of his team, drive home talking about the latter's potential future as a professional hockey player. They make a quick stop at a gas station to refuel. During what appears to be a robbery of the gas station, Joe Darley (Matt O'Leary), younger brother to gang leader and a new initiate, slices Brendan's throat open with a sword. Nick attempts to ambush the thugs, managing to pull off Joe's mask and see his face, but Joe escapes, only to be hit by a car. Nick rushes Brendan to the hospital, but his son dies from major blood loss.
Nick soon discovers that, if the case goes to court at all, the murderer would only be sentenced to 3 to 5 years in jail for his crime, so he forces the police to drop the case. Joe, now a free man, becomes the target of Nick's revenge; he is eventually killed when Nick stabs him with a rusty knife in Joe's home. The gang leader, Billy Darley (Garrett Hedlund) wants revenge for the death of his younger brother. After discounting members of other gangs as culprits they learn a gang member's sister happened to see a man in a suit the night Joe died. Quickly realizing it must be Nick, they ambush him the next day, atop a multi-story parking garage. Nick escapes, but takes another gang member's life in process. Billy warns Nick that they will be coming for his family and that he has bought them a 'death sentence.'
The police detective who's been following Nick's case, Detective Jessica Wallis (Aisha Tyler), is aware of what is happening; she grants Nick's family police protection and has a callout to Billy's gang. The officers watching over the family are killed in an ensuing raid, and the gang members make their way inside, where they attack and shoot at Nick, his wife Helen, and his remaining son Luke (Jordan Garrett).
Nick and Luke survive, but Helen does not (although this situation with Helen is not shown to the viewers). After Detective Wallis gives a brief speech on how wars are never settled, she lets Nick pay a short visit to his now-comatose son in the hospital, where he apologizes for not being a better father. Nick escapes the hospital to go after the remaining gang members, obtaining guns from a black market gun dealer named Bones Darley (John Goodman). (Darley has been the gang's boss up to this point, and is revealed to be Billy's father. Billy kills him after Darley criticizes and warns him.) Nick then tracks down Heco, another member of the gang, and interrogates him about where the other members are. He calls Billy on the phone, threatening him, and executes Heco while Billy is listening. Nick heads to Billy's lair, called "The Office", to kill the remainder of the gang. After an intense shootout, he confronts and shoots Billy in a quick duel which leaves both men seriously wounded. Dying of his wounds, Billy admits to Nick that he did, in fact, turn Nick into a vicious cold-blooded killer just like him. After this, Nick pulls out one of his guns and asks if Billy's "ready" (indicating to the viewer that he finishes Billy off, although this is not shown).
With his family now avenged, Nick returns home and starts to watch videos of his family. Detective Wallis arrives and tells him that his son has started moving and will live. Nick shows a sign of relief and looks back to the TV, which shows Luke, Helen, Nick and Brendan singing on the couch. Nick is seriously wounded at this point, and it is unclear if he survives in the end (although the unrated cut actually shows him dying).
Read more about this topic: Death Sentence (2007 Film)
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)