★★
I don’t care if someone wants to remake a movie, just as long as the writers and directors can give me a reason why the movie was made other than to extract money from my wallet. It’s a waste of time when a remake uses the title and notoriety of an earlier movie while adding nothing new to the story. Case in point: Death Wish, a remake of the Charles Bronson original from 1974. That director Eli Roth is involved in this update isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that, given his devotion to horror and b-movies, he doesn’t generate much interest in the story. Whether it’s Hostel or The Green Inferno, we can look at an Eli Roth movie and know that it’s his. Not so with Death Wish, which has a predictable plot and contains laughable plot developments.
That isn’t to say that there’s nothing to like here. It’s hilarious that Bruce Willis sleepwalks through this movie, as if he wandered into this theatrical release by accident after appearing in a string of direct-to-video movies like The Prince and Vice. The setting was moved to Chicago, an interesting choice due to that city’s high murder rate, especially when compared to New York City, which has seen a decrease in murders since the original movie was set there. I smirked when a bowling ball fell on a bad guy’s head, reminding me of The Naked Gun 2½ for some reason.
Paul Kersey (Willis) is a Chicago physician (not an architect this time) who is out on call when thieves break into this house and murder his wife (Elizabeth Shue) and put his daughter (Camila Morrone) in a coma. He receives support from his brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) and his co-workers, but he is frustrated that the police consider his case as one of many. Unwilling to be a case number on a detective’s cork board, Paul takes matters into his own hands when he finds a gun and goes on a few practice runs to rid Chicago’s streets of petty crooks. Later, in an astonishing coincidence, one of his wife’s assailants winds up on his operating table. In a city with dozens of hospitals, this comes across as lazy writing, a clue that nobody could think of a better way for Kersey to track down his targets.
Kersey dispatches more thugs one by one. Frank becomes a suspect. The detectives are on the trail and closing in. In the original film, Kersey was initially troubled by what he did. After his first kill, he becomes sick. Eventually he becomes desensitized to the violence, to the point that he’s launching rockets by the time Death Wish 3 rolls around. Willis’s Paul Kersey on the other hand is emotionally ready to become a vigilante, only needing to work out the particulars of gun handling. I could chalk it up to this new Paul Kersey being a physician and used to seeing blood, but I won’t give that much credit to the screenwriters. More likely, the filmmakers just didn’t want to address the anguish one must feel from taking a life. It would get in the way of getting to the action.
The plot is simple. Kersey’s family is assaulted, he wants revenge and goes out to get it. What Roth doesn’t deliver in the way of meaningful storytelling, he makes up for in action, some of which is well done. Ultimately, there’s nothing here enticing enough to make this a worthwhile experience. Death Wish operates within guidelines established long ago, guidelines that Eli Roth should know to break.
© 2018 Silver Screen Reviews
That isn’t to say that there’s nothing to like here. It’s hilarious that Bruce Willis sleepwalks through this movie, as if he wandered into this theatrical release by accident after appearing in a string of direct-to-video movies like The Prince and Vice. The setting was moved to Chicago, an interesting choice due to that city’s high murder rate, especially when compared to New York City, which has seen a decrease in murders since the original movie was set there. I smirked when a bowling ball fell on a bad guy’s head, reminding me of The Naked Gun 2½ for some reason.
Paul Kersey (Willis) is a Chicago physician (not an architect this time) who is out on call when thieves break into this house and murder his wife (Elizabeth Shue) and put his daughter (Camila Morrone) in a coma. He receives support from his brother Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) and his co-workers, but he is frustrated that the police consider his case as one of many. Unwilling to be a case number on a detective’s cork board, Paul takes matters into his own hands when he finds a gun and goes on a few practice runs to rid Chicago’s streets of petty crooks. Later, in an astonishing coincidence, one of his wife’s assailants winds up on his operating table. In a city with dozens of hospitals, this comes across as lazy writing, a clue that nobody could think of a better way for Kersey to track down his targets.
Kersey dispatches more thugs one by one. Frank becomes a suspect. The detectives are on the trail and closing in. In the original film, Kersey was initially troubled by what he did. After his first kill, he becomes sick. Eventually he becomes desensitized to the violence, to the point that he’s launching rockets by the time Death Wish 3 rolls around. Willis’s Paul Kersey on the other hand is emotionally ready to become a vigilante, only needing to work out the particulars of gun handling. I could chalk it up to this new Paul Kersey being a physician and used to seeing blood, but I won’t give that much credit to the screenwriters. More likely, the filmmakers just didn’t want to address the anguish one must feel from taking a life. It would get in the way of getting to the action.
The plot is simple. Kersey’s family is assaulted, he wants revenge and goes out to get it. What Roth doesn’t deliver in the way of meaningful storytelling, he makes up for in action, some of which is well done. Ultimately, there’s nothing here enticing enough to make this a worthwhile experience. Death Wish operates within guidelines established long ago, guidelines that Eli Roth should know to break.
© 2018 Silver Screen Reviews
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