Wish becomes a chilling nightmare
Death Wish (R16, 107 mins) Directed by Eli Roth Bruce Willis’ latest action-thriller will be hailed by the National Rife Association and hated by the Chicago Tourism Board.
Yes, Eli Roth’s ( Cabin Fever, Hostel) remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson vigilante ‘‘classic’’ provides the worst promotional ad for a US city since 1996’s Independence Day revealed that authorities were prepared to take out Houston via nuke if aliens attacked.
The windy city of this movie is plagued by a soaring murder rate. With 762 murders and 3500 shootings in the past year, something has to give.
Our ‘‘hero’’ is Chicago ER doctor Paul Kersey (played by whispering, world-weary Willis), whose daily grind includes regularly attempting to take bullet holes out of the city’s residents. In all his nightmares though, the one thing he never expected was to find his wife and daughter in his department. They’re there because of a robbery gone wrong, which leaves Mrs Kersey dead and Miss Kersey in a coma.
At first, Paul is simply in shock, the anger left to his more hotheaded brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio).
But as the detectives on the case fail to turn up any clues let alone suspects, Paul’s frustration begins to manifest itself in more than just sleepless nights. So when an opportunity literally lands on his surgery floor, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
Allegedly the third choice for this ‘‘reimagining’’ of Brian Garfield’s 1972 novel (after Liam Neeson and Sylvester Stallone), Willis ( The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) is a perfect fit for the gun-toting moonlighting medic(and at least a more convincing surgeon than Bronson was an architect).
Likewise D’Onofrio (TV’s Criminal Intent) also gives his character a compelling charm and intensity that seems almost too good for the material.
That’s probably because while screenwriter Joe Carnahan (TV’s The Black List, Smoking Aces) tries to inject some kind of debate about Kersey’s actions into the story, director Roth decides to go more grand guignol the longer the story goes on.
Death Wish‘ s villains don’t just die, they get gorily bashed, smashed and mashed as Roth takes a splattergun approach to his ever more morally questionable tale.
By the time Willis’ Kersey comes up with a stationary solution to his shoulder wound we know the plot has gone full Rambo.
It’s a pity because Death Wish could have some interesting things to say about You Tube How To videos and contains some artful cinematography and editing, but seems to settle on, as one of its onscreen commentators puts it, ‘‘normalising dangerous behaviour’’. - James Croot