[yasr_overall_rating]
A family man becomes a vigilante killing machine when his family is violently attacked by robbers.
I think we all know by now that “Death Wish” is a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson movie of the same name. For its day, it was condemned and castigated by many but it made such an impact on society, that Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey, an architect who takes revenge on the men who brutally killed his wife and raped his daughter, would carry the mantle for another four films. With each iteration, the stories became more implausible and all you could do was sit back and watch them for what they were: exploitation movies. In today’s volatile climate, releasing a film like “Death Wish” could be considered by many, a huge gamble for the producing studio, MGM, but based on the positive reactions from the audience I saw this with, I think it will make its money back and you never know, Bruce Willis may have just found a new franchise that will keep him busy for the next twenty years.
Willis plays the aforementioned Paul Kersey but instead of him being an architect, like Bronson before him, he is a doctor living in Chicago with his beautiful and loving wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and teenage daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone), who is about to leave home to head off to college. Paul, Lucy, Jordan, and Paul’s brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio) are about to head out to dinner one evening in celebration of Jordan being accepted into her new college but Paul is called into work at the last minute for an operation when his substitute doctor calls in sick. Lucy and Jordan decide to stay home and Frank leaves but soon thereafter, three masked men break into the house demanding money and valuables. Not wanting to put Jordan’s or her own life in jeopardy, she opens their home safe and empties all the contents for them but just as they are about to leave, one of them begins to sexually assault Jordan, which causes Lucy to fight back, and as a result, she and Jordan are both shot.
By the time they arrive at the hospital, Lucy is pronounced dead and Jordan falls into a coma. Paul is filled with grief and anger because he feels responsible for not being there to take care of his family and as time goes by, Detectives Kevin Raines (Dean Norris) and Leonore Jackson (Kimberly Elise), who are assigned to the case, inform him that they are doing everything in their power to capture the bad guys. With despair finally taking a hold of him, he decides to take matters into his own hands. When a thug is brought into the ER one evening suffering from a gunshot wound, while trying to resuscitate him, a handgun falls out of the man’s jacket and onto the floor. Paul kicks it under the bed and after pronouncing him dead a short while later, when everyone else has left, he picks up the weapon and heads home. Courtesy of some YouTube “How-To” videos, he begins teaching himself how to properly use a gun. When he feels confident enough, he takes to walking the streets at night, wearing a hoodie to conceal his identity and starts killing bad guys who are trying to carry out heinous crimes on innocent victims.
Eventually, he is able to locate one of the three men who broke into his house and one by one, he kills them all until the last man standing, Knox (Beau Knapp), the leader of the group, taunts him via text, stating how much he enjoyed killing his wife. After Jordan wakes up from her coma, Paul has to inform her of her mother’s passing and when she is strong enough to leave, he takes her home. That night, however, Knox and his men decide to pay a visit to Paul and Jordan, with the intent of killing them both but this time, Paul is ready for them!
I’ve never been a big fan of director Eli Roth. I didn’t care for his “Hostel” movies and “The Green Inferno” was simply torture porn, filled with violence for the sake of violence. While I love horror films in general, these movies were a reflection of the violence going on in the world at the time and while it makes the films more authentic, in a horror movie, we don’t want that level of realism, that’s the whole point, to watch events transpiring onscreen that are so far-fetched and unbelievable, you can do nothing but just sit back and have fun with them. Here though, Roth delivers his first big-budget action thriller and does an admirable job along the way. Since 2012, the majority of Willis’ movies have gone straight to DVD, not a good sign for an actor that was once considered one of the most bankable stars on the planet but for the first time in years, Willis actually comes alive and shows some genuine emotion and responsiveness, elements that have been missing from his work for decades. The rest of the cast are uniformly good but make no mistake, this is Willis’ movie, and if you try to take that away from him, you might just lose your life!
In theaters Friday, March 2nd
