2 out of 5

Directed by: Eli Roth

Admittedly, and rather darkly, I’m in it until the end.  As an avowed Bruce Willis deidcant, I trucked through his fallow years in the 90s, then was ‘rewarded’ by his resurgence with Sixth Sense and Fifth Element, and a spattering of better roles thereafter.  But of course, even some of those worst efforts were helmed by notable folk, and had theater releases.  At some point in his later years, Mr. Willis signed some kind of bulk movie deal and has been starring in DTV cheapies, in which he’s obviously just contractually obligated to X minutes, and he shoots them per his comforts.  The movies are of okay to bad quality, but his roles are fully interchangeable, and he clearly doesn’t care.  I get a little motivated when he gets another theater release, but since Die Hard 5 – which was trash – even those have rather gone downhill.  On the one hand, if you’re getting paid well and can work comfortably, I can’t blame someone for taking advantage of that.  And he’s cast as a very purposeful stereotype in these flicks, so I can’t even say the films would be improved by Bruce actually being awake to deliver his lines.  But there are moments when he does seem engaged, or flicks that actually offer some opportunity beyond his shtick, that make me wish for at least one more legit go…

Since the dude is, uh, 65 or so at the time of this review, and assuming I have a few years left on me, I’m thinking I’ll be around until he retires in one form or another, hence the ‘dark’ omission above: I’ll keep watching these things.  Because paired with material he cares about, and with a strong director, Bruce is still one of my favorite actors.

The Death Wish remake had promise as being such material.  Willis talked about it ahead of time; he seemed to care about it.  That it was being juggled between name directors spoke to a larger theater presence than most of his current work, and just the notion of casting the classic everyman badass in a role that was defined by the (at the time of the original) 50 year old everman badass Charles Bronson seemed fitting, especially in the Taken-era of old man vengeance flicks.  The movie landed with Eli Roth, though, which was troubling: because he’s not a great director.  And I also suspected he’d have a soft touch with Willis, which meant the actor would have his way.

I liked Cabin Fever as much as any horror fan at the time, but mostly because of the gore gags.  Hostel would confirm that Roth wasn’t the best writer, and his framing and actor direction is almost non-existent: the camera sits; his actors read.  Death Wish could be pulpy, or it could be topical, but via Roth, I feared it would just be bland, with dashes of gore.

This is accurate.

And while the material may have held promise for Willis at some point, I think that faded by the time he was appearing on camera.  Moments here and there he’s convincing – as grieving father Paul Kersey, let down by police inaction regarding his wife’s murder, turned to vigilantism as a results – but there are embarrassing chunks of the film where he actually has the opportunity to act and just… doesn’t.  His takes feel like warm-ups to get the sense of the scene’s flow, which is where I’d go back to blaming Roth for either not pushing for more takes, or for not offering better guidance on the scenes.  Or maybe it’s on editor Mark Goldblatt, possibly cutting connective tissue during which Kersey would be reacting appropriately to things like, uh, his daughter’s coma or whatever.  This, indeed, extends beyond Willis: Paul’s brother, Frank, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, has a bit part as a confidant, and Dean Norris shows up as the investigating cop, but both D’Onofrio’s and Norris’ deliveries suggested that someone kept telling them that there would be more to their roles than there was…  When Kersey kicks in to full assassin mode, Roth tries to up the camp with some bloody kills, but even here Death Wish is indecisive, not committing to full-on horrors with cutaways but not digging in enough to up the tension.  Technically, then, the movie either fails, or is just bland.

Structurally, things are a bit better, mainly because the script from Joe Carnahan (though rewritten, I believe) doesn’t try to overly justify or glorify things, or make any outright points.  Because of this, it fails to follow through with anything impactful at the conclusion, though by the same token, it leaves the movie more open – the cops aren’t incompetent, they’re just swamped in procedure; Kersey – at least in the script, though not really acted as such by Willis – has to take some emotional steps before being egged into killing; and the fact that our baddies are people of color is attempted to be worked in to the conversation, via clips of radio shows / podcasts discussing what it means to have some white dude suit up and start shooting drug dealers…  None of this goes very deep, but again, I appreciated that the writer(s) tried to play fair, and understood that this movie wasn’t going to really start or solve any larger conversations.

Ultimately, Death Wish is a passable flick, but only deserving of a theater release because of the status of the original.  It’s DTV-level quality, rendered more inert than usual by a disappointingly tuned out Bruce – because the role did have a bit more meat than his usual grizzled ex-cop type – and completely hands-off direction from Roth.