Review: Death Wish

Death Wish (2018) - Eli Roth

       We live in a pretty terrifying time, where the violence in real life is starting to seem scarier than the things we are seeing in movies. Is it life imitating art turned up to 11? Or is the job of filmmakers to make critiques of the violence we all witness, to try and comment on the craziness surrounding us as they (hopefully) entertain us as well? Or is it all just a crapshoot, totally random and basically, at its heart, just an excuse to squeeze a dollar out of every last consumer in America? Well don't worry, because the remake of Death Wish (1974, which spawned four sequels, four!) starring Bruce Willis and directed by splatter-house horror director Eli Roth is absolutely, unequivocally uninterested in answering any of those questions! They're also not at all interested in justifying the need for a tired remake that champions vigilante justice and gun violence! Cool!
       Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a nice guy! And a surgeon! He's great to his wife (a plastic faced Elizabeth Shue, who should seriously just star in this show because it'd be better) and daughter (Camilla Morrone) and even his deadbeat brother (Vincent D'Oonfrio, who seems to have lost most of his Daredevil weight, which bothers me)! He's so nice and good and calm, you'd ALMOST think he's barely acting (hint: It's true, because Bruce Willis). Until one night, something absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking happens to him. His house is robbed, and when things go wrong both his wife and daughter are shot, leaving his daughter in a coma and Detective Shue (Shoe Police!) dead. What is a grieving father with a daughter in critical condition to do? Well, go out and shoot a bunch of people, become a viral sensation, and gosh darn it have a little bit of fun while he's doing it! It's like how John McClane got his groove back!

       Forget that this is a movie in 2018 that features scenes about how easy (and fun!) it is to buy and operate high-powered assault rifles, and how tone-deaf it is to the current social and political climate. This movie is completely tone-deaf in its own self-contained universe. The flick goes from Kersey crying on the train, trying his hardest to cope with the loss of his wife, to him playing target practice with a stolen gun while fucking AC/DC blares over everything ("Cuz he's back! In! Black!) What the hell am I supposed to do with that? His daughter almost gets raped one minute, and the next I'm supposed to be cheering because he decides to start killing people? He's a surgeon who, in the matter of weeks, goes from saving lives to torturing people, and having a lot of fun doing it. Is violence bad? It sure was when it happened to his family. But when it's really over the top and ridiculous then it's fun? How realistic is this movie supposed to be? The screenwriter, director, and no one else involved seems to have any idea.

       It's so disjointed and uneven it makes it hard to even enjoy the "action" (which is really just violence). There's just so many non-human decisions that make up this entire movie. In fact, I don't even have the time to fit all of them into a normal review, so in the honor of the movie's love for guns, let's bullet point all the stupid, nonsensical things about this movie! (See what I did there?) Also, some spoilers ahead, but I promise, you don't care:

• Do people still actually listen to the radio? How is Mancow still a thing? (P.S. I grew up in Chicago my whole life, and I thought I was fucking done having to listen to Mancow by this point).
• Also, why set it in Chicago at all (if for any other reason than to flip the locations of the original) if you're not going to make some kind of commentary that means something about gun violence? The movie starts with police reports of senseless Chicago violence, and then proceeds to celebrate more senseless Chicago violence.
• The cops (Whatup Dean Norris/ASAC Schraeder) searching for Kersey's family's killers (and Kersey, who DJ jockeys have coined as The Grim Reaper), basically find out it's Bruce Willis who is killing people, then leave him alone for weeks for no reason, and then absolutely let him go. YOU'RE THE WORST COPS EVER. 
• At a scene in a pizza place a group of four people have three ALMOST EMPTY deep dish pizza trays in front of them. You're trying to tell me four people ate almost THREE DEEP DISH PIZZAS? Fuuuuck you. I'm a fat Chicago deep dish guzzling WHORE and not even I can eat more two slices of that without dying and exploding from the stomach and butt. 
• The violence is so ridiculously over the top that it makes me irritated we had to sit through a scene where a 17-year-old almost gets raped. A fucking bowling ball falls on a dude's head. No joke.
  
• There's a scene where a copycat vigilante killer tries to replicate Bruce Willis' terrible example and died immediately and then is never mentioned again. Bruce Willis has zero reaction to this.
• Actually, Bruce Willis seems to have zero reaction to almost everything. What I'm saying is: He's a crotchety old man who clearly doesn't give a fuck.
• The attempts at humour (Gluten-free things taste bad!) are sad. I felt sad.
• HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE A DEATH WISH. His daughter is in a coma! He's not trying to die. This title is stupid. It's a stupid, mistitled title. 

       This movie's not so much terrible as it is just completely unnecessary. If you want to watch a movie where a man's family is brutally murdered and he decides to take vigilante justice as a coping mechanism, just watch the first one. I truly have no idea why this movie exists in 2018. It's odd that no one else involved in the production process ever stopped to ask themselves, "Um, why?" It's not like this was a big cash cow either, just raking it up at the box office (half a week after its release it's made 14 million dollars on a 30 million dollar budget, so). Just adding memes (which were so painfully and obviously written by a guy who's forty-five) and changing the location to Chicago doesn't justify its existence. If you're gonna make a violent revenge thriller, then do it. If you're gonna make a movie about a desperate man who's family was destroyed, then do that instead (please don't do that).

Grade: 2 out of 5 Mancows