Death Wish (2018)

Like every Hollywood movie rife with firearms mistakes. No ejected casings, Glock All wrong, a gun shop in Chicago ? I DOUBT IT.

Down to earth, nor fake CGI BS that you get nowadays. Good old fashioned gritty movies. Loved it

The revenge story has been used plenty of times in the movie industry, and it's hard to find a unique twist to these revenge stories. Death wish thought it was clever to add a twist, being the protagonist is a doctor/surgeon. The idea sounds fresh, but poor execution led this movie down the drain. I am a fan of Bruce Willis, but this is one of his worst movies on the big screen. I don't know if Bruce Willis had a bad script, but his character was really boring and one dimensional. In order to have a good revenge story, you must have a protagonist you cheer for and a antagonist(s) you despise. It's really easy to make an antagonist that everyone hates, but it's harder to make a protagonist that you can relate to and have sympathy. This movie is just so boring and annoyingly predictable and cliche. Very few times I agree with the critcs, but this time, I fully agree with them.Story: 3/10The robbers break into a house and kill the whole family, but the father survives and seeks revenge. This plot has been done so many times, for example, Law Abiding Citizen. I really wasn't that connected with the family before they were killed off, which is one of the worst flaws in revenge stories. All you have to do is make the antagonist(s) kill a puppy, and their you go; a sad revenge story. The movie would've been better if they took a little more time into introducing the family and less time hunting the antagonists. The pacing is really awkward; he hunts the antagonists then goes back to his job, then helps out a little kid and then goes back for revenge. The pacing is all over the place, and the movie didn't keep track of what it was supposed to be. Death Wish gets really boring halfway through the movie, because of the horrible pacing. The story is really cliche, which is normal for a revenge story, it would've been better if they added a twist at the end and tried to be more innovative. Overall, the story is below average; suffering from awkward pacing and lack of innovation.Characters: 5/10I'm really happy about the casting for this movie. Dean Norris was an awesome choice for Detective Kevin Raines; Dean Norris knows how to play a cop. The acting wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the best acting of 2018. I would say the worst part about the characters are how boring they are. Bruce Willis' character, Paul Kersey isn't bad, but the daughter is by far the worst. Jordan Kersey (The daughter) is the victim of the robbery, and whenever there is a victim in a movie, you have to have sympathy for them, but I felt no sympathy; she's smart, talented in sports, has a wealthy father, and grew up in a good neighborhood. If the family has a rough financial problem, lives in a poor neighborhood, and the child (Under the age of ten) gets bullied in school, then I would feel a lot more sympathy. The Frank character was pretty unnecessary in my opinion, and I feel like he could've been removed and replaced as the son of Paul Kersey, just to make the movie more dramatic. Overall, the characters are boring and offer nothing new to the table, the acting wasn't bad, and some characters were unnecessary.Action: 6/10Death Wish was surprisingly brutal, which is a very positive thing in a revenge story. Besides the brutality, there isn't really anything unique. I did like how Paul Kersey was uneducated about weapons, and learned how to use weapons the hard way, it gives a sense of reality. It would've been nice to see the detectives take more part in the action, instead of helping at the end. Overall, the action is quite bland, except for the overly exaggerated brutality.Overall, Death Wish isn't a very good movie, and I hate bashing on movies, because I know how much effort is put into them. This movie tries to offer knew things to the table, but fails in cringeworthy ways, like the media aspect. The media aspect was added in to show how single minded people are, but it just comes out cringey, like when the news and radio shows were calling Paul Kersey "The Grim Reaper". This movie tries to talk about so many issues about the modern world, and it just ends up losing track of the main focus of the story. The story was bland, the characters were one dimensional, and the action wasn't that satisfying. I don't recommend buying this movie, or renting it; just wait for it to appear on Netflix.

Comparisons against the Charles Bronson "Death Wish" are inevitable, the main difference being that with the passage of four decades, this Bruce Willis vehicle is much slicker in production values and doesn't seem quite as gritty as the original. By gritty, I'm thinking about Bronson's loading up an old sock with a couple rolls of quarters and using it as a nifty weapon. But then again, as a medical surgeon, Willis's character had the advantage of knowing just how and where the most excruciating pain can be administered to the human body. I guess it was a pretty conscious decision on the part of the film makers to place the story in Chicago where the weekly murder rate routinely makes the headlines today. The crime that sets in motion Paul Kersey's mission of revenge is similar to the 1974 picture, and a concession made to the outcome has Kersey's daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) pretty much recover from her serious injuries. Where the present day picture differs is in the way Willis's character achieves closure against the three thugs who broke into his home and violated his family. He manages to get his revenge on all three hoods, whereas Bronson's Kersey never did. Rather, he took it out against whatever street rabble he could in the absence of running across the original perpetrators.