Movie Review - Death Wish

The remake of Death Wish is out!

  I was looking forward to seeing the remake of ‘Death Wish’ as soon as I saw the previews and would have seen it on its opening March 2nd weekend except that it did not make it to the local Marshalltown movie theatre until this past weekend so Kathy and I went to the Saturday matinee with 11 other movie goers. 45 years later the original ‘Death Wish’ is dated but at the time it was a controversial film. There was an unprecedentedly graphic and violent rape/murder scene that was completely omitted years later for the movie's network television debut. But what caused the majority of the controversy was the correctness or incorrectness of the concept of vigilante justice. In the original film architect Paul Kersey’s wife is murdered and daughter raped in a home break-in. Kersey deals with his grief and the inability of the police to bring the perps to justice by arming himself and heading out to the streets of New York. Armed first with a roll of quarters in a sock and quickly graduating to handguns, Kersey makes himself a seemingly easy target who switches from victim to hunter and metes out justice as the judge, jury, and executioner.

  Aside from the monotonal all-time tough guy Charles Bronson as Kersey, the movie features solid character actor Vincent Gardenia as Detective Frank Ochoa who finds out that Kersey is the vigilante but allows him to escape charges if he moves into another city. This offer is due to the falling crime rates ever since Kersey has started his activities and the desire of the city authorities to use the vigilante threat to keep the crime rates down. The movie became part of the national consciousness and was propelled into franchise-hood after the Bernie Goetz ‘subway gunman’ shootings in 1984 brought the vigilante question back into the headlines.

  Bruce Willis was cast as Paul Kersey and given a new job as a Chicago doctor instead of a New York architect. I thought Willis was a good choice to give Kersey a lighter touch and was excited to see how the vigilante question would be treated 45 years after the original Death Wish with the debates over gun rights and ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws at a fever pitch and this was even before the firestorm caused by the latest school shooting in Florida.

  The movie starts out much like the original. Kersey is a law-abiding citizen livingh an ideal family life with his wife and daughter on Lakeshore Drive. There is even a bonus as his deadbeat brother is played by the exceptional Vincent D’Onofrio (Kingpin in Daredevil and Detective Goren in Law and Order : Criminal Intent). The story continues with the brutal murder of his wife in a home burglary but without the rape. Although the daughter still survives she is in a coma in Kersey’s hospital.

  The movie continues to track the original as Kersey sinks into despair at the loss of his wife and the ineffectiveness of the police to catch the perpetrators. One 21st century twist is that Kersey has a therapist to talk to so we know what is on his mind. Kersey tries to thwart a mugging but gets beat up for his trouble. He then flirts with the idea of buying a gun but ends up getting an untraceable one that improbably drops out of a shooting victim’s waistband while in the emergency room that he learns to clean, load, and fire from watching You Tube videos. While riding the trains to keep his mind off his troubles, Kersey uses his gun to thwart a carjacking and shoots a helpless and disarmed carjacker dead. In another 21st century twist the act is caught on a video that is uploaded and gone viral which leads the same detective that haven’t found Kersey’s burglars to look for the vigilante.

  At this point the movie stops following the ‘Death Wish’ plot and turns more into a revenge\morality play. At the hospital, Kersey looks at the gunshot wound of a child whose transgression was to go home from school through the territory of the drug dealer known as the ‘Ice Cream Man’. Using an address gleaned from the youth’s medical records, Kersey heads to the Ice Cream Man’s block in broad daylight and empties two clips in him. This premeditated act is not the kind seen in Death Wish. The only public controversy is from Chicago radio hosts debating vigilante justice and a chief of detectives demanding the same detectives that have a wall of unsolved crimes (including Kersey’s) catch the vigilante.

  The plot goes further astray when Kersey attends to the wounds of a gunshot victim that is wearing Kersey’s watch that was stolen in the burglary. The movie morphs from ‘Death Wish’ to ‘Revenge Wish’ as Kersey is no longer looking to rain death on criminals but just to avenge his wife. The rest of the movie is entertaining enough as Kersey tortures one of his wife’s murderers, dispatches another thanks to a well-timed bowling ball, and finishes off the third in a finale worthy of any action movie. It just isn’t Death Wish anymore. The movie ends with some similarities to the original in that Kersey and his daughter move to another city but instead of a tacit agreement on the part of the police Kersey is let off scott-free by the detectives that have gleaned his identity.

  ‘Death Wish’ is a well-made film. I like the idea of Kersey being featured in a viral video and getting firearm basic training from YouTube videos. Willis and D’onofrio give fine performances. To me the film’s glaring flaw is that it seemingly wanted as little as possible to do with the original except to draw an audience. This movie is a cut above Willis’s recent forays into the Direct-to-DVD market but has a lot in common with them as soon as it drops the transformation of Paul Kersey from citizen to vigilante. I’m sure the remake aspect was necessary to allow for a bigger budget but after three weeks has barely grossed its' 30 million production budget. I consider this a Red Box special which is a shame because by being truer to the original film I believe the movie would have capitalized on the growing discussion over gun ownership and violence instead of being a revenge vehicle for an aging action hero.

Ultimately the Death Wish remake misses out on the central theme of the original - the transformation of Paul Kersey...

For good or bad I must say they don't make gunfights (or hair) like they used to. The scenes from Death Wish III (my personal favorite of the series) from the 3:00 to 7:50 marks are classics!