Sadism sinks a dire remake
Death Wish
15 cert, 107 min Dir Eli Roth
Starring Bruce Willis, Elisabeth Shue, Camila Morrone, Vincent D’onofrio, Dean Norris, Jack Kesy, Len Cariou, Kirby Bliss Blanton
Few would argue that 1974’s Death Wish, directed by unabashed vulgarian Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson as the grizzled epitome of the urban vigilante, was a masterclass in intellectual clout or social commentary.
Still, if there’s anyone who can make Winner look subtle, it’s Hostel director Eli Roth, whose gun-toting, Brucewillis-starring update is a predictably risible, but also snide and insidious, attempt to have its cake and eat it.
Released in America just two weeks after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, it barges into the gun control debate with a grim, prankster attitude, like a boorish comedian grabbing the mike at a state funeral.
Paul Kersey, an architect in Winner’s original, is now a surgeon, which qualifies him to know exactly what levels of pain a body – say, the body of a scummy sociopath who left your only daughter in a coma – is cut out to endure. By day, Paul is stapling injured patients back together on the operating table. By night, he’s out to spill brains, at least after his wife (poor Elisabeth Shue) and teenage daughter (Camila Morrone) fall victim to a home invasion while cake-baking in their Evanston mansion.
A pound-store Tarantino with the sadism dialled up and the wit switched off, Roth has the very basics of a stomach-clenching suspense sequence down pat. It’s just that the film never provides any rationale for why you’d want to submit to it.
Shue and Morrone give the only two sympathetic performances, but as in every unthinking vigilante flick going back to the Wild West, they’re strictly here to be victimised and get no role in the payback: Bruce gotta do what Bruce gotta do, it’s as simple as that.
Where Roth really goes in to bait his critics is with this film’s gleefully dishonest attitude to gun ownership. Twice, Paul strides purposefully into his local arms emporium, and is served by a busty blonde NRA pin-up (Kirby Bliss Blanton) who flirts with him outrageously and openly scoffs at the registration etiquette.
Willis, meanwhile, tones his habitual smirk down to get through the whole “grief ” phase before looking like he’s weirdly enjoying himself. If Eli’s clearly in it for the gloating laughs, Bruce looks strictly interested in the pay cheque. TR