Death Wish (

2018

) ½

On February 14, 2018, a gunman shot up Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, killing 17 and injuring another 17. It was a tragedy that raises a number of questions about our society and how we go about preventing disasters like this in the future. These are serious matters, well worth considering, but let's be real here, I'm just a nerd with a film blog, and I'm hardly fit to investigate and comment on these matters. If you are looking to me for answers about questions of grave political significance, then you have come to the wrong place. I'm here to talk about subjects that I can reasonably claim to be an authority on (namely films, games, and Cold War era history). Indeed, I only mention the Parkland Shooting here because it pertains to the release of today's film, which came out two weeks later on March 2, 2018. This was derided by many film critics as insensitive, for daring to release in the wake of an unrelated shooting, which struck me as rather odd. After all, nobody criticized Jack Reacher (2012) for coming out a week after the Sandy Hook shooting, or Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) for dropping less than a month after the Columbine Shooting. One can certainly argue that the central story of Death Wish is more disturbing and grotesque than the films mentioned, but it seems impossibly distant from what happened at Stoneman Douglas High School. Paul Kersey is, after all, an old man surgically targeting criminals where as the Parkland shooter was indiscriminately targeting bystanders. The only film that I can think that got such a reception as the Death Wish remake, was Carrie 2: The Rage (1999) which was released in the wake of the Columbine shooting, and openly glorified indiscriminate murder carried out in a high school setting by a frustrated student (which is a bit more on the nose than a retiree killing the criminals that murdered his wife and put his daughter in a coma). What I'm saying is that it seems like all the criticism directed at Death Wish alleged insensitivity, feels like it's coming from somewhere else and to understand that you'll need to understand the original Death Wish (1974) and how its seen by most professional critics.

When talking about Death Wish (1974), we're really talking about two films: the Death Wish (1974) that you can watch and the Death Wish (1974) that seems to exist only in the minds of its detractors. Now, I'm no fan of the original film (I consider it one of the weakest entries in the series) but some of the things I've read about it come across as positively deranged. Glen Weldon at NPR (who has the dubious honor of penning the most insane review I've ever read on the subject) says the original film's central ethos is "we white straight men are under attack and thus are so completely justified in slaughtering — ah, defending ourselves — with extreme (and literal) prejudice." Vadim Rizov at the A.V. Club says “it’s very much the film equivalent of “I’m not racist, but…” Ty Burr at the Boston Globe is more succinct when he calls it an “NRA wet dream.” Those of us that have seen the original Death Wish (1974), are probably left scratching our collective heads in confusion. Kersey is an anti-hero in that film (later entries in the series would see him become less morally complicated and more openly heroic but also far goofier and less threatening), and his actions are depicted as those of a deeply troubled man losing his grip on his sanity. Since he is targeting random criminals, and not those he has a personal vendetta against, his actions are almost impossible to sympathize with and the brutality of the violence onscreen is further alienating. Kersey's actions are morally ambiguous in the extreme, and only a bigger lunatic than him would see anything in Death Wish (1974) as anything even resembling an endorsement of vigilantism (again the sequels are another story). It's even more bizarre that so many otherwise intelligent film critics can invent a racist subtext that obviously isn't there. Sure, in the original Death Wish (1974), Paul Kersey does blast a few black muggers, but he also shoots whites muggers as well, almost as if the race of the criminals is unimportant to him. Indeed he kills more whites than blacks, though a line of dialogue later in the movie says that he's killed more blacks than whites, maybe there's some off-screen bloodshed. It's hardly the extreme (and literal) prejudice alluded to above (nobody sees fit to mention in the Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987) and Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (1994), Kersey exclusively kills white criminals). Perhaps the professional film critics above have some unacknowledged biases of their own, and when they hear that a vigilante is killing criminals they immediately assume that he must be targeting minorities because in their warped minds only minorities can be criminals.

Still, the endemic racism of professional film critics only explains part of Death Wish's poor reception, the rest can be chalked up to timing. As I mentioned in my review of Red Dawn (1984), much of that film's critical backlash was due to it serving as a convenient whipping boy for liberal critics that were frustrated with President Reagan. Hollywood was a left-leaning place, so most films released were either apolitical or openly liberal and consequently film critics were starved for targets that they could vent their growing angst on. This is even truer in the 21st century, as there are still fewer openly conservative films coming out of Hollywood, and the hatred that leftist professionals have for President Trump has eclipsed their disdain for Ronald Reagan. As a result, most professional film critics are so eager for a target to give a savagely negative review to that they are starting to target harmless, mostly apolitical films like Death Wish just because they might have a slightly conservative element hidden somewhere in their run time. From the reviews, you might be mistaken for thinking that Death Wish is a recruitment film for the NRA, but really it has about as much political significance as The Punisher: War Zone (2008). Hell, the most politically charged moment that the insane NPR review I cited above can find is that one of the characters is reading Milton Friedman! I can scarcely believe that these hyperbolic reactions are real. Imagine how crazy the Trump Derangement Syndrome induced reviews will get in 2020 when we have an active presidential campaign! I still hope that Trump doesn't win re-election, but at least the bat-shit insane film reviews I'll get to read will form something of a silver lining.

All that said, I have to agree with the critical consensus in at least one area: Remaking Death Wish (1974) in the current time is senseless and pointless. The primary appeal of Death Wish (1974), was the cathartic release it granted for frightened law-abiding citizens who had either been made a victim of criminals or live in fear of the day that they would be made a victim of them. This made a degree of sense in 1974 when the crime rate in America was rapidly approaching that of Mega City 1 in Judge Dredd, but it just rings hollow in 2018 when the crime rate has been falling for the past two decades. Indeed, New York has become such a sanitized Disney World that the setting of Death Wish has had to shift to Chicago, a city that still has a very high violent crime rate (though lower than it was in the 1970s), less it seems absurd. This film cannot enthrall us like it would its original audience, the themes are too dated and too distant for the majority of Americans to appreciate. Indeed, I would say that now more Americans fear authority figures than they do criminals, and they have good reason to do so. Thus, in order to satisfy its viewers, Death Wish has to engage not as a political gut-punch, but as a thrilling action movie. On that front, the results are a bit mixed.

The action scenes are well-shot and choreographed without even a trace of the obnoxious shaky cam that modern Western action filmmakers delight in hiding their fights behind. Most shoot-outs are well lit and even the one in the gloom of night club bathroom still manages to be coherent. There is an element of messiness and chaos to them that lends added authenticity to the action. Take for instance the way that Kersey's gun jams in the middle of one shoot-out and he tries desperately to clear the breach or the way Kersey injures his hand from inexperience during his first firefight and shakes his hand in pain. At times it goes a bit too far, like when one thug has Kersey cornered but is taken out by a bowling ball that was knocked free earlier in the fight. Director Eli Roth made a name for himself with horror movies that were maligned (mostly unjustly) as torture porn, and boy does it ever show in his use of gore. The high point here has got to be when Kersey drops a car on a scumbag and we get to watch his head explode Scanners (1981) style! The action is all well, so it's telling that the biggest problem in the film is that there is so little of it! Hell Kersey doesn't even shoot someone in anger until the 40-minute mark! I'm a patient man, but a film shouldn't be halfway over before it gets to the point of its existence. Even after that, the violence is spread out rather thinly. A message to Eli Roth: We came to see gun battles, not listen to talk radio personalities debating those gun battles after the fact!

The story follows Paul Kersey (here a doctor instead of an architect), who is called into the hospital for an emergency one night, leaving his wife, Lucy, and daughter, Jordan, home alone. Since this is called Death Wish, you can imagine what happens next; a group of masked burglars break in and hold the two at gunpoint, demanding all the valuables in the house. Lucy takes one of the thugs upstairs while the remaining two stay downstairs to keep an eye on Jordan. One of them immediately busies himself with molesting the teenage girl while upstairs Lucy fumbles with the lock to the family safe as the gunman watching her gets less and less patient with her constant screw-ups. These two scenes are played out with a series of rapid cuts that is more exciting than such a foregone conclusion has any right to be. The scene culminates when Lucy unlocks the safe and Jordan grabs a knife and slices up the face of her attacker. The would-be rapist pulls off his mask and threatens to kill the girl just as Lucy is coming downstairs. Since both have now seen his face the criminals shoot both the women and high-tail it out with the loot. Lucy is dead, while Jordan is left in a coma.

Paul responds poorly to all this, feeling as though he has failed his family and more importantly failed as a man because he could not protect them. After taking some advice from his Texan father-in-law to heart, Paul decides to buy a gun and take his vengeance on the Chicago underworld. Here, the film makes the rare concession to realism and acknowledges that while guns are pretty easy to buy, the security around them at every reputable gun-dealer makes them less than ideal for vigilante crusades. Paul doesn't exactly like the idea of registering a gun to his name and address (and likeness thanks to the store's security cameras) before going out and using it to deliver some extrajudicial executions. It's a welcome change from Grand Theft Auto V [2013], where you can just hop into a gun store (in ersatz California no less) and walk out with a mini-gun that will never be traced back to you (or even confiscated by the police if you are arrested). Kersey instead bides his time, and when a gangster is brought onto his operating table and drops a gun at his feet, he takes the opportunity and snags it. Sure, this doesn't answer the question of how he bought ammunition for that gun after that, but hey, things like that are covered in the willing suspension of disbelief. After a bit of training, Kersey takes to the street to blast carjackers and attempted rapists, quickly become a controversial figure for some and a beloved folk hero for others.

Now Roth wants to make Paul out to be a sympathetic anti-hero, not a crazed gunman like the original Death Wish (1974), so it won't do to have him murder random criminals for the entire runtime. So, before long Kersey gets a lead on the bastards that killed his wife and put his daughter in the hospital, so naturally he starts investigating, turning up first the fence that flipped his stuff, and then one-by-one the crew responsible for the robbery gone wrong. At the same time, the police are hunting him down in turn, getting closer and closer to the truth. The plot is very by-the-numbers, and won't surprise anyone let alone series veterans but it provides a serviceable enough framework for the action sequences which get thicker on the ground as the film progresses.

Bruce Willis makes a fine replacement for Charles Bronson but falls into the same trap that Bronson did in the original Death Wish (1974) of being too tough a guy for the role. Maybe if this was Bruce Willis fresh from Moonlighters, I'd be willing to think he's just a regular guy pushed too far, as unlike Bronson he does not look like a baseball glove that walks like a man, but three decades of seeing him in action movies makes it difficult to accept Willis as just a regular guy. He also seems pretty damn bored with the role, mumbling and dozing his way through the film. To be fair the material he has to work with is pretty cliché, and most of the scenes in-between the action sequences are superfluous, so I can understand his boredom. Indeed, I find myself feeling the same disappointment with Death Wish that I felt when I watched Red Dawn (1984). This film was hyped up as an insane alt-right political tract, but really it's just a competently made action movie with themes that we've all seen before a couple of hundred times.