Death Wish
Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a Chicago surgeon who has a pretty good understanding of the violence that overwhelms
He’s sorta like the garbage collector, except in this case, the “garbage” here would be people.
Cast of Characters:
Dr. Paul Kersey – Bruce Willis
Frank Kersey – Vincent D’Onofrio
Lucy Rose Kersey – Elisabeth Shue
Det. Kevin Rains – Dean Norris
Knox – Beau Knapp
Det. Leonore Jackson – Kimberly Elise
Director – Eli Roth
Screenplay – Joe Carnahan
Based on the novel Death Wish by Brian Garfield
Producer – Roger Birnbaum
Rated R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout
Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a Chicago surgeon who has a pretty good understanding of the violence that overwhelms his city from all the patients that are rushed into his ER. While that understanding has extended no further than his job, that all changes when there is a brutal break-in at his house that leaves his wife Lucy Rose (Elisabeth Shue) dead and their daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) hospitalized.
After realizing the police force investigating his family’s case is so inept they manage to give Sheriff Scott Israel a competence bump up to Officer Barbrady, Kersey takes matter into his own hands and begins hunting down the assailants responsible for his wife’s death. As the body-count begins to rise, the city’s attention turns to this newly-formed vigilante they have dubbed the “Grim Reaper”, with Kersey attracting both supporters and detractors to his brand of justice. However, as he continues to take out the trash, he begins to turn a blind eye to the consequences his actions may have.
The late, great character actor Charles Bronson starred in a number of Western/action classics such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, Once Upon a Time in the West and Hard Times, but many consider his career-defining role to be Paul Kersey in the Death Wish franchise (to me, he’ll always be Harmonica from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West), which began in 1974 and continued through four sequels all the way to Bronson’s last theatrical starring role in 1994, Death Wish V: The Face of Death.
While the sequels are a whole lotta blah that get increasingly absurd one by one even by Death Wish standards, the original film benefits from Michael Winner’s gritty direction and Bronson’s committed performance. It also, for better or worse, ushered in a whole new subgenre of vigilante crime flicks – Steven Seagal’s Hard to Kill, Kevin Bacon’s Death Sentence (based on novelist Brian Garfield’s follow-up to Death Wish), Jodie Foster’s The Brave One, and arguably the most popular, Liam Neeson’s Taken franchise.
So, 44 years after Bronson avenged his beloved wife, Death Wish is getting a remake, with Bruce Willis taking over the reigns of the vengeful Paul Kersey (this time, Kersey is a Chicago doctor, whereas Bronson’s character was a Manhattan architect). Why remake Death Wish when if you’ve seen one vigilante family avenger thriller you’ve seen ’em all? I have no idea, but we’re getting one anyway.
Development on a remake began over a decade ago in 2006, when it was announced that Sylvester Stallone would be directing and starring in the film. Then, in 2012, after Stallone had long dropped out of the project, Narc and The Grey filmmaker Joe Carnahan was hired to write and direct, with Liam Neeson and Frank Grillo attached; however, Carnahan left the project the following year due to creative differences (though he’d retain sole writing credit for the completed project). After a few potential directors and a list of potential stars that included Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, MGM finally settled on Bruce Willis and Eli Roth as their star and director, respectively. Though initially set for release in November 2017, MGM chose to push the release back to March 2018. Some speculate that the delay was due-in-part to the Las Vegas mass shooting which occurred a little over a month prior to its November release.
So, after years in development hell, and a brief delay in release, how does Bruce Willis’s vengeance thriller stack up to the original Charles Bronson classic?
The Good: I’ve always felt Eli Roth is one of those filmmakers who’s fully capable of putting together a good film, if only he could get the right material. From a technical standpoint, he can craft a good-looking film; however, most of his efforts wind up being gratuitous gore-fests. The lone exception so far, for me, has been the batty Keanu Reeves thriller Knock Knock, which I admit is a totally nutty film, but Roth’s grasp of the tone proved to be effective.
Here, in Death Wish, Roth puts his bag of tricks on display, although to a significantly less graphic extent when compared to his Hostel films. Rogier Stoffers’s cinematography provides Chicago (Montreal also doubled as Chicago) with a sleek sheen, and that is more than what the original Death Wish sequels, which got progressively cheaper, can boast. Roth also knows how please his fans with a good onscreen kill. One torture sequence between Bruce Willis and an auto mechanic involved in his wife’s death offers a bit of twisted entertainment.
The Bad: Unfortunately, one entertaining sequence isn’t enough to save the film; in fact, it poses one of the bigger problems plaguing Death Wish, and that is its inability to decide what kind of film it wants to be. Does this want to be a serious, introspective character study of one ordinary man’s guilt driving him to take the law into his own hands, or does it simply want to be a pulpy, exploitation thriller? Roth seems unable to decide on which direction he wants to take, and his confusion results in a tone that is wildly uneven. It’s not over-the-top enough to be a sensationalized actioner, and pivotal scenes meant to dramatically momentous (particularly a scene between Kersey and his poacher-chasing father-in-law) come off as unintentionally hilarious.
Death Wish also fails as a character study. In fairness, Willis deserves just as much blame there (we’ll get to him soon), but this version of Kersey lacks the authenticity of Bronson’s Kersey (well, at least for the first film). Bronson’s character, despite being a conscientious objector during the Korean War, had military experience, so his capability of being a threat with a good shot was believable. In the updated version, Willis portraying a surgeon is far-fetched enough. Watching a man, who we assume has little to no experience firing a gun, turn into Annie Oakley overnight stretches credibility beyond measure. The commentary also weakly tries to play both sides, glamorizing Kersey as a vigilante hero, while also making sure to briefly wag a finger at him for taking the law into his own hands. This is far from a case of ambiguity that respects the audience’s intelligence. This is simply a film that doesn’t know what it wants to say.
What’s disappointing is that today’s social media obsession presented this film with an opportunity to provide itself with a contemporary spin on the original, yet it never dives deep into that angle, save a few obligatory references to YouTube, memes and podcasters debating Kersey’s brand of justice. None of it feels substantive, nor does it show how the internet world reacting to Kersey would affect his further actions. On the contrary, it appears to have no effect.
Plus, in a day and age when everyone has cell phones that come equipped with cameras and internet uploading features, you can’t convince me no one can identify a man walking around Chicago disguised in only jeans and a hoodie.
Back in the late ’80s, ’90s and even the early ’00s, Willis would’ve excelled at this type of role. Here, he appears bored as ever, just like he’s shown throughout the long list of straight-to-DVD junk he’s been taking paychecks for during the last decade. Granted, it’s not like the material is giving him the best to work with (Looper and Moonrise Kingdom are two recent examples that prove Willis can deliver strong work from strong material when he wants to), but there’s still no excusing his checked-out performance.
Hopefully, someone responds to the APB that’s been put out for the swagger and self-deprecating humor that made Willis a star all those years ago, ’cause it’s been missing for years.
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Vincent D’Onofrio gives an okay performance as Kersey’s brother, but his character serves absolutely no purpose. He could’ve been written completely out, and you wouldn’t have noticed a difference. Both Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise are fine actors, but they bring nothing new to the table that we haven’t seen from the thousands of other cops that “only can do so much” in every other vigilante thriller.
The Ugly: I love Elisabeth Shue, and I take no shame in admitting the brief crush I had on her after seeing Adventures in Babysitting (Chris Columbus’s fun directorial debut) for the first time. She’s done fine work in The Karate Kid, the Back to the Future series, Leaving Las Vegas, Mysterious Skin and even Alexandre Aja’s pulpy Piranha 3D… but oh. my. God. she is terrible here.
It’s bad enough she’s reduced to nothing more than a “trigger device” for Bruce Willis’s character in just a few flat introductory scenes that don’t ring even the slightest bit true. It’s all the worse in how cringe-worthy she is when pleading for her daughter’s life during the first-act home invasion.
Lastly, not that this film’s been scoring authenticity points left and right before we get to this point, but in the closing moments, Death Wish has one of the most laughably implausible crime scenes ever put together. Bullet-riddled corpses lie all around the Kersey home. Blood is splattered everywhere. Boxes of Chicago style deep-dish pizza and six packs of soda are right there on the counter. Cops have a laugh and help themselves to a slice.
Hmm… something seems amiss here.
See, this is why Chicago’s crime rate is through the roof.
Consensus: Death Wish is slickly made and offers a few entertainingly over-the-top kills; however, it lacks the grit and conviction of the original 1974 classic, and suffers immensely from Eli Roth’s inconsistent tone and Bruce Willis’s uninvolved performance.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give Death Wish a D (★).
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