BLOODY REMAKE OF 'DEATH WISH' STARRING BRUCE WILLIS

Bruce Willis in what looks like a golf swing follow-thru YEAR: 2018

The difference of the original Charles Bronson crime exploitation classic DEATH WISH and its four sequels is the same between Eli Roth's modernized take with Bruce Willis... 

Instead of one man becoming a freelance, anything-goes vigilante because of his wife's death and daughter's coma (aided by a young Jeff Goldblum), he sets out after the real killers. Which makes 2018's DEATH WISH more of a sparse Neo-Noir extension of Denzel Washington's surprisingly good THE EQUALIZER than a high-octane "yippee ki yay" update of the 70's cult classic...

Grade: A—

Instead of a borderline-liberal architect like Bronson's Paul Kersey, Willis's Paul is Doctor Kersey, getting firsthand experience of the perpetual violence in the Windy City of Chicago (replacing New York)... 

While the initial set-up borders on cliché, involving a too-perfect, glossy suburban clan headed towards inevitable disaster, and Dr. Kersey's much-too-easy transition from a mild-mannered ER surgeon into a hoddie-wearing, seemingly flawless and UNBREAKABLE (get it?) professional gun-man, director Roth blends horroresque ultra-violence into the otherwise standard action sequences while, in the story, TV news stations, Internet talk shows and (mediocre and annoying) shock jock Mancow has deemed Kersey with the nickname, The Grim Reaper...

The original vigilante legend Charles Bronson

Eventually tailed passively by BREAKING BAD fan-favorite Dean Norris as the token cop, who, sadly given his well-known potential, could have been played by anyone. Meanwhile, the rudimentary, spontaneous practice-kills feel more like an urban asphalt Western, like the original, while the third act is extremely predictable only because... what else is gonna happen to those guilty, heartless bastards but DEATH? Making this WISH a dark yet breezy (and thankfully not too-brooding) revenge-driven time-filler, providing the audience exactly what they paid for and — this is meant as a compliment — nothing more.

For nostalgia's sake, this is how the original ended and also in Chicago where Bronson's Paul Kersey was relocated