6 / 10
Official trailer
Death Wish (2018) is the Eli Roth-directed remake of the 1974 Michael Winner film, with Bruce Willis playing the Paul Kersey role originally performed by Charles Bronson. Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay. The film transposes the setting from 1970s New York City to contemporary Chicago. Kersey’s profession changes from architect to emergency room trauma surgeon. The supporting cast includes Vincent D’Onofrio as Paul’s brother Frank, Elisabeth Shue as Paul’s wife Lucy, Camila Morrone as their daughter Jordan, and Dean Norris as the detective investigating the resulting vigilante killings.
MGM produced the film on a budget of approximately thirty million dollars, and Annapurna Pictures released it. The domestic gross was approximately thirty-five million dollars.
Death Wish entertains me and leaves me faintly annoyed at the same time. It’s a slick, watchable revenge picture, and I can feel the bigger, nastier film Roth and Carnahan walked right past.
The 2018 remake is faithful adaptation of the original’s surface plot without successful translation of the original’s moral ambiguity. The killings of Kersey’s wife and his daughter’s incapacitation provide the inciting incident. Kersey acquires a firearm, develops his vigilante skills, and conducts targeted killings of the perpetrators across the film. A parallel narrative shows Detective Raines investigating the resulting vigilante murders. The plot mechanics function competently. The thematic content doesn’t develop the moral seriousness the original provided. The remake is efficient action material without the cultural weight that gave the original its standing.
The Willis Performance
Bruce Willis plays Paul Kersey with the star presence that defines his late-career action work. The performance is professional, competent, and emotionally limited. Willis communicates Kersey’s grief through restrained physical performance instead of through emotional display. This suits the character’s medical professional background. A trauma surgeon would handle personal trauma with the same controlled affect that he uses for patients. The performance choice is right for the character’s profession even when it limits the range of emotional engagement available to the audience.
The comparison to Bronson is unavoidable and unflattering to the 2018 production. Bronson held the original together through his sustained physical presence and his star meaning. The actor playing Kersey in 2018 needs to communicate that vigilantism is a meaningful response to contemporary conditions. Willis communicates that vigilantism is a thing the character is doing. That flatness is my biggest problem with the film. I never believe this man’s grief has turned him into someone new, and without that the second half plays like a list of errands.
The film’s broader weaknesses partly emerge from the gap between what the character needed to communicate and what the performance communicates.
For Writers
Casting decisions in remake work require careful consideration of what the original casting communicated and what the new casting will communicate. The 2018 Death Wish cast Bruce Willis without resolving how his star presence would translate the original Bronson presence. The translation failed. The lesson applies to any adaptation across mediums. Identify what the original element communicated. Choose the new element based on what it’ll communicate. The substitution should serve the same dramatic function even when the surface element is different.
Substitutions that fail to consider the function produce weaker adaptations than the original deserved.
The Political Adjustment
The 2018 production engaged with the political conditions of its production moment. The original 1974 Death Wish addressed 1970s urban anxiety about street crime. The 2018 Death Wish addresses contemporary American gun politics and contemporary discourse about civilian armed response. The shift produces changes in the film’s content. Kersey’s firearm acquisition is presented in greater detail than the original required. The film engages with contemporary debates about gun-store legality, concealed-carry permitting, and civilian armed response. The engagement is more direct than the original’s treatment of similar material.
The political engagement produces mixed results. Both possible directions disappointed audiences who approached the film expecting clear political position. Audiences expecting endorsement of armed civilian response found the film’s actual position more ambivalent than the marketing suggested. Audiences expecting critique of armed civilian response found the film’s actual position more sympathetic than the marketing suggested. The film occupies a middle position that neither side of the contemporary debate found satisfying.
The original 1974 production benefited from operating in a different political moment where the moral ambivalence could land as serious examination and not as commercial compromise.
I wish the film had picked a side, either one. Fence-sitting on a subject this loaded leaves the gun-store scenes feeling oddly inert, and those should be the tensest minutes in the movie.
For Writers
Political content requires either clear position or clearly developed ambivalence. Material occupying the middle without sufficient development produces work that disappoints all audiences. The 2018 Death Wish occupies an ambivalent political position without developing the ambivalence to the level that would justify it. The lesson applies to fiction with political content. Take a position and defend it. Or develop ambivalence to the level where the lack of position becomes itself a position. Avoid the middle ground that’s commercial compromise and not as real engagement.
The Eli Roth Direction
Eli Roth’s directorial background in horror cinema produces effects on the Death Wish remake.
The violence is more graphic than the original required, and Roth presents it with the visual attention horror cinema brings to violent content. The trauma surgery sequences in the early runtime are visually demanding. Roth films the vigilante killing sequences with similar attention to wound detail. The visual approach suits Roth’s filmography but doesn’t necessarily suit the Death Wish material. The original Winner direction was less interested in violent spectacle and more interested in the psychological territory the violence produced.
The surgery scenes are where I think Roth earns his paycheck. He films wounds like a horror director, and a trauma surgeon who knows exactly what a bullet does to a body is the most unsettling idea in the movie. Then he spends that idea on gore.
The directorial shift produces consequences. The 2018 film is more entertaining action material than its source and less serious dramatic material. Audiences seeking pure action entertainment will find the remake more efficient than the original. Audiences seeking dramatic substance will find the remake much less serious than the original. The tradeoff is specific to the directorial choice. Different directorial sensibility would have produced different trade-offs. Roth’s specific contributions are clear and the work he produces is consistent with his prior career.
The work suits some Death Wish audiences and disappoints others.
Craft Note
The remake’s medical-professional revision of Kersey’s occupation produces narrative consequences that the original architect occupation didn’t produce. The trauma surgeon protagonist treats victims of the violence the film documents before becoming a vigilante. The professional context allows the film to establish Kersey’s specific knowledge of bodily damage before he begins inflicting damage himself. The change is structurally interesting, and it also produces a protagonist whose professional knowledge informs his vigilante violence. The audience watches a trauma surgeon weaponize his medical understanding against the criminals he targets.
This produces ethically more disturbing material than the original architect occupation generated. The film doesn’t fully engage with the implications of the occupational change. A more ambitious adaptation would have developed this material considerably. The 2018 production uses the occupational change for surface detail instead of for thematic development.
Is Death Wish worth watching?
The 2018 Death Wish is competent action remake without successful translation of the original’s specific contributions. The Willis performance is professional but doesn’t provide equivalent cultural weight to the Bronson original. The Roth direction emphasizes violent spectacle over psychological territory. The political engagement occupies an unsatisfying middle position that disappoints both ends of contemporary debate. The film is recommended for audiences who enjoy efficient 2010s action material and have no specific investment in the original.
The film won’t satisfy anyone who values the original’s moral ambivalence or who expects a remake to develop its source.
I give it a 6 because it’s efficient, well cast and never dull, and it wastes the one fresh idea it had. A surgeon turning his medical knowledge into a weapon should have been disturbing, and Roth mostly makes it look cool. That gap between what the remake could have been and what it settled for explains a large part of the negative critical response.
