Eli Roth is not the first name that comes to mind when you think of modern-day cinematic satirists. Given his background of grindhouse throwbacks of the ’70s and ’80s, you would expect his version of “Death Wish” — a remake of the 1974 Michael Winner film starring Charles Bronson — to be a straightforward exploitation film shot on 16mm, blown up to 35mm, and grimy as all hell. Surprisingly, Roth’s film has more in common with “RoboCop” than Winner’s original, but in chasing after that level of prestigious trash, this version of “Death Wish” sets itself up for lofty goals that it can’t quite achieve.
The basic setup is more or less the same as the original, and every other revenge film inspired by it. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a surgeon whose wife (Elisabeth Shue) is murdered and daughter (Camila Morrone) left in a coma after a botched robbery at their house. Fed up with the police’s inability to solve the case, Kersey gets himself a gun and takes the law into his own hands and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Revenge man sets out to get revenge. Tale as old as time. But right from the start, something about “Death Wish” is slightly off. The early scenes with Kersey and his family interacting with one another are bad to the point where it feels intentional. It’s like an attempt to capture everyday mundane conversation to make them relatable, and then they forgot that this isn’t a mumblecore film and that dialogue — however quaint — requires some stylization. Later on, you start to wonder if the family was depicted that way to showcase a “perfect life” in order to make the downward trajectory more devastating. But then there’s a scene in which Paul’s brother (Vincent D’Onofrio) confronts him about his vigilantism, and then the realization sets in that the scenes of family drama do not work.
The drama, or lack thereof, holds “Death Wish” back from being a good movie, and pushes it to being a frustrating movie. At the midpoint, when Kersey begins his vigilantism, there’s a refreshing angle to his exploits that reinvigorates the film. His first set of actions are sloppy, which leads to his hand being cut by the recoil of the gun and his escapade being filmed by a bystander and uploaded to social media. In between acts of serving justice, said acts are talked about on radio programs, shared across social media platforms, and meme’d to death. Kersey also watches YouTube videos on how to clean his guns, and how to successfully destroy a hard drive.
While that may seem on-the-nose, it’s effective as a real-life demonstration of a scroll through a Twitter feed, coming across both horrific news stories and funny .gifs in equal measure. There’s another scene where Kersey goes to buy a gun after seeing an advertisement for a shop on the internet, headlined by an attractive store clerk (Kirby Bliss Blanton). The clerk tells him that the background check is “easy” and that he’ll need to take a shooting course, but whispers that, “everybody passes.” While meant to be a satirical jab at our nation’s unhealthy gun obsession, there is certainly an unease knowing that there are people out there in the world who will misconstrue that. It should also be noted that Joe Carnahan — originally slated to direct — wrote the screenplay. While a solid filmmaker in his own right, the expectation of the combined powers of Carnahan and Roth to deliver a deft examination on vigilantism is unfair, but big points for the attempt to separate itself from the revenge movie pack.
However, this is where “Death Wish” finds itself with more balls in the air than it can juggle. You have flat familial drama, coupled with intriguing social commentary, but then it’s also the kind of movie that has a training montage in a comic book style split-screen set to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” to give you further tonal whiplash. Not to mention for how sleek and sanitized the shooting style is, the violence in this movie is incredibly gnarly, to the point where the obligatory audience reactions in the screening, for once, were not hyperbolic.
The film’s best stability through all of these shifts is Willis who, while he could do a role like this in his sleep (and has), commands the screen and reminds us why he became an above-the-marquee star in the first place. It’s a shame that the usually-great D’Onofrio and Shue are put in thankless roles. After Willis, Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise are the greatest things about the film, as the two detectives cleaning up Kersey’s warpath. They are the definition of “movie cops,” and they know they are “movie cops,” and are having a blast playing “movie cops.”
Much like how the original “Death Wish” reflected on its time, acting as an analog to the Vietnam War and that sense of not feeling like you know your country anymore, Roth’s update does something similar in regards to gun violence and how we process the news that comes with it. In its time, Winner’s film was condemned as being vile and relishing in its vigilantism, but it’s now hailed as a watermark of its genre. There’s no doubt that Roth’s film will be reviled by some, and criticized for its brutal violence and the way it is played for shock value. Will it too be hailed as a watermark of its genre? Doubtful, for it’s too inconsistent to be seen as anything more than a footnote. But, only time will tell. [C]