A pointless remake: Death Wish review by Rashid Irani

The original offered a layered take on vigilante justice. This remake offers just lip service and is, overall, not even sporadically interesting.

Death Wish

Direction: Eli Roth

Actors: Bruce Willis, Elisabeth Shue

Rating: *

The original Death Wish became a cause célèbre for its take on vigilante justice, in 1974.

This time around, Die Hard action icon Bruce Willis takes on the role of the grief-stricken surgeon seeking vengeance against the criminals who brutalised his family in their suburban Chicago home.

But rather than acting as social commentary, the remake merely exploits the overarching theme of crime and punishment to unleash more violence and death.

Elisabeth Shue is wasted in the role of Willis’s murdered wife

The script offers little by way of character development, preferring instead to pay lip service to concerns about gun culture and the validity of ‘purposeful’ vigilantism.

Age hasn’t exactly treated Bruce Willis well but he manages to pull off the down-and-dirty stuff with conviction. Old-timer Elisabeth Shue is wasted in the role of his murdered wife.

Unlike the original, a cult classic, the new millennium Death Wish is not even sporadically interesting.