Death Wish (2018)

After reading a few reviews, it seems that quite a few believe that this film pales in comparison to the original film. After watching both versions, I completely disagree. What I thought was done fantastically was how quickly they tied together a wonderful story of love between Bruce Willis’ Paul Kersey, Elisabeth Shue’s Lucy Kersey and Camila Morone’s Jordan Kersey. The three only shared approximately four or five minutes of screen time, and yet, director Eli Roth made sure that the audience could feel how connected the three were to one another. Unlike the 1974 original, the audience really felt something, on an emotional level, when Paul lost his wife and was dealing with issues regarding his daughter. Part of the reason that I believed this was so was the fact that Willis’ is a more convincing actor than Charles Bronson. His facial expressions, his body language and his tone of voice (which, in a lot of ways is eerily mesmerizing) are all much more finely tuned. This film proves that, at more than sixty years old, Bruce Willis is still the badass that he was as John McClane in the original Die Hard. Along with Willis, the acting, in general, was fantastic. An actor that I regularly enjoy--and this film was no exception--is Vincent D’Onofrio. While his character was slightly confusing--as he played both the mooch and the loyal brother--I truly believed every word that came out of his mouth. Eli Roth, once again, shows the world that his directorial ability is high. Roth, as many know, typically sticks to the horror genre, but this film (while it still retained a similar tone and style to Roth’s horror films) was certainly different than the others. He stayed close to the original story but still found ways to manipulate it and make it better than before. The story revolved more around Kersey rather than the story of the police trying to find him. Roth did a great job of including both Kersey’s story and the story of the city. We saw a number of perspectives, including Kersey’s (which is one that I felt lacked in the original). From the very beginning of the film I was on the edge of my seat; I was excited to see what happened next and couldn’t wait to see how it unfurled under the direction of Roth. The deaths throughout the film mirrored those from Roth’s other films and, while they could have been considered corny or unnecessary, they are what would be expected from Roth and I appreciated each death more than the last. From the story to the pacing and the acting to the musical choices, I felt that this film far surpassed Michael Winner’s original. My favorite part of the film was the final two seconds in which Willis plays homage to the original film, pointing his imaginary gun at the thief down the road. This was the perfect way to wrap up the film and leave a good taste in the mouth of those who were new to the story and those returning from the 1970’s. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1137450/?ref_=nv_sr_1