Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Death Wish (2018)

Movies about guns don't kill people.  Except Death Wish.  If viewers don't die of boredom the Ed Woodian level of incompetence will give them heart attacks.

A remake of the famed and fondly remembered Bronson B-movie blockbuster of 1974, Death Wish stars Bruce Willis, which sadly is its first .50-cal sized problem.  People still think of Willis as the everyman action star.  Brucie's filmography tells a different story, one where he gave the fuck up on acting five years ago.

2014's Dirty Sanchez to the Die Hard franchise, A Good Day to Die Hard, was the last theatrical release Willis starred in.  Since then he's cashed paychecks for eight direct-to-video/streaming shit heaps, played minor characters in the G.I. Joe and Sin City sequels and had a seven second cameo in Split.  Maybe he's too rich to care anymore?  Maybe at 63 he's just fucking tired?  Whatever the reason, the moonlight's gone dim.  The yippee has ki yayed.

Willis seems so bored and distant in Death Wish that it's like they forgot to wake him up before yelling, "Action!"  He has the same lifeless look on his face and tone in his voice when he's telling his adored wife that he loves her, mourning her untimely death and torturing one of the low lifes that killed her.

Willis' Paul Kersey is a surgeon in Chicago.  During a burglary gone wrong, Kersey's wife, Lucy (Elisabeth "Soft" Shue) gets killed, and his daughter, Jordan (Camila "Don" Morrone), gets coma-fied.  What's a wealthy doctor to do but pull on a hoodie, pick up a gun and start smokin' scumbags all over Chi-Town vigilante style?

That Willis refuses to, you know, act only wounds Death Wish.  What finishes it off is director Eli "Oh Yeah He Did" Roth's dick-handed "craftsmanship."  Roth creates more plot holes than he fills.  The cops tracking down the vigilante the media has dubbed the Grim Reaper know he suffered a nasty cut and used a semi-auto pistol on his first night of street justice-ing, yet they don't collect any blood evidence for DNA or shell casings for fingerprints.

When the cops decide the Reaper must be Dr. Kersey's brother, Frank (Vincent "Price" D'Onofrio), they explain that their Holmes-like deduction (John not Sherlock) is based on the Reaper being in good shape.  WTF?!  The only shape D'Onofrio's been in since 2000's The Cell is round!  And the only way Death Wish makes any sense at all is if the hospital where Kersey works is literally the only one in Chicago.

If Willis and Roth had no fucks to give for Death Wish, why should you?

March 9, 2018