Death Wish
starring Bruce Willis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elizabeth Shue, Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise
screenplay by Joe Carnahan
directed by Eli Roth
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
This is a re-make of the 1974 movie of the same name, which starred Charles Bronson, directed by Michael Winner. Both films are based on a 1972 novel by Brian Garfield.
In 1974, Charles Bronson played Manhattan architect Paul Kersey who became a vigilante to avenge the murders of his wife and daughter.
In 2018, Bruce Willis played surgeon Dr. Paul Kersey of Chicago who became a vigilante to avenge the murder of his wife and attempted murder of his college freshman daughter. The film’s premise is a violent crime wave in Chicago. Dr. Kersey’s family is attacked during a home invasion after his home address was lifted from his car’s GPS by a restaurant valet who is also a gang member and a burglar.
I watched the original film many years ago. I sparked four sequels that I never bothered seeing. But Willis is a better actor than Bronson ever was, and I enjoyed this movie. Anyway, after the crime we see Dr. Kersey evolving through his emotions and is reactions: shock, grief, frustration, anger, motivation, plan, action. As a surgeon he sees and treats many people with injuries from violent crime. Eventually, frustration with the slow pace of the police investigation into his wife’s murder nudges him toward a threshold until a sports/gun shop television commercial makes him timidly window shop for firearms. After a time he returns to the store and legally buys weapons for home defense - weapons we see him use.
His is first encounter with criminals comes on a night walk when he intervenes in a violent carjacking and soon shoots dead the two perpetrators. That gives him a taste for revenge and he quickly guns down a drug pusher in broad daylight. After that, he determines to go looking for his wife’s killers by himself. Through sheer luck and out-of-his-mind bravado he succeeds in finding (and brutally killing) one guy after another until the final climax in his home. His daughter awakes from a coma and returns home from hospital. However, because she saw the faces of her attackers in the original incident, they come back to kill her. But Paul is waiting.
Paul’s predatory hunting does not go unnoticed by the police and by the media who label him the “Angel of Death.” The police slowly zero in on him, but a combination of sympathy and admiration sways them to look the other way with a promise that, after the final bloody shootout in his house, he is finished with vigilantism.
It’s easy to take pleasure at the idea of vigilante justice and take some glee in seeing it acted out. I remember the 1984 New York Subway shooter Bernhard Goetz who shot four black men he believed were in the process of robbing him. The violent crime climate in New York City cultivated that kind of behavior. Goetz had previously been a victim of subway assault with outrage at the handling and outcome of the case. The 1984 incident sparked a nationwide debate on race and crime in major cities, the legal limits of self-defence, and the extent to which the citizenry could rely on the police to secure their safety. Goetz, dubbed the "Subway Vigilante" by the New York press, came to symbolize New Yorkers' frustrations with the high crime rates of the 1980s. He was both praised and vilified in the media and public opinion. The incident has also been cited as a contributing factor to the groundswell movement against urban crime and disorder, and the successful National Rifle Association campaigns to loosen restrictions on the concealed carrying of firearms. Goetz was acquitted of all charges except on of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served eight months in jail. Then in typical American fashion he was later convicted in a civil suit by one survivor of his attack.