DEATH WISH (1974) http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZgZ9cN4kQ[/video]
V.S.
DEATH WISH (2018) http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzILu6yyA20[/video]
Most critic reviews of 2018's remake were pretty scathing, so I went in expecting the worst. But it was actually a decent, by the numbers, action B-Movie. My wife certainly enjoyed it. But is it a worthy remake? Nope. Not even close.
As a product of the talents writer Joe Carnahan and director Eli Roth, I was flabbergasted at how mainstream and formulaic this movie was, lacking any of the nuance or subversion of the original. This movie plays it safe from beginning to end and has it priorities in all the wrong places. It is more focused into turning Willis character back into an 80s badass action hero than exploring the actual horror that drives him.
In the 1974 original, the assault on Bronson's family is shown. It is exploitive, ugly, brutal and disturbing. It lingers and haunts the remainder of the story, adding a subtext to every action and motive. As a viewer, it makes you uncomfortable and angry, and makes you sympathetic with Bronson's decent. But in the remake, they cut away from the assault as though this was a 1980s network tv movie going to commercial and the aftermath is so bland, it lacks any true impact on the viewer.
In terms of performance, we get some brief glimmers of the Willis of we knew and loved from the 90s, but these are rare and for the most part he is very wooden and seems to be on auto pilot. Bronson, on the other hand, is an actor of limited range, but what he does he does well. And in this movie, you can feel his uncomfortableness as he shows a more vulnerable side to himself and this in turn makes the audience uncomfortable, which only adds to the power of the story.
Additionally, in the original, Bronson never learns who attacked his family. As in real life, he and the audience never achieves any closure. But the remake is not brave enough to go this route. It follows typical action movie protocol as Willis discovers his family's attackers and hunts them down one by one, even throwing in some terrible 80s style one liners.
The only thing fresh the 2018 remake brings is the social media element but it almost feels at odds with the rest of the movie rather than supporting it. The remake moves the action from New York to Chicago, but it all looks too slick and polished rather than the crime war zone it is suppose to be. In the original, you can feel and taste the fear the citizens of New York live in, while in the remake it just seems like background noise.
The remake attempts to end on the same iconic moment...
the finger gun point... but it fails utterly since the original does not seem to understand the intent, or at the very least, failed to show/build to this moment. In the original, you begin to realize that Bronson's character is no longer killing badguys for revenge or justice or to protect the innocent.... he is doing it because he enjoys it! He has in many respects become the monster he wants to destroy. But there is none of this darkness in the remake.
Death Wish 2018 -- a safe, unoriginal, revenge movie -- 6/10
Death Wish 1974 -- exploitive, unnerving, uncompromising -- 8/10