2018 is turning out to be a truly inclusive year for on-screen representation. “Black Panther” invited African-American audiences to see themselves in a massive superhero movie that wasn’t about their own oppression, “A Fantastic Woman” gave transgender women the chance to see themselves in an acclaimed film that wasn’t terribly retrograde, and now Eli Roth’s dangerously enjoyable “Death Wish” gives right-wing lunatics the opportunity to see themselves in a fascist fairy tale that wasn’t directed by Dinesh D’Souza. To each their own cinema.

Set in an alternate-reality Chicago where the police are so overwhelmed by inner-city crime that they can’t spare the resources required to solve the murder of an affluent white woman, this contemporary riff on Charles Bronson’s vigilante…

Bruce Willis awakens from his acting coma and actually acts as Dr Paul Kersey in Eli Roth’s remake of the Michael Winner / Charles Bronson revenge classic.

Chicago has a high as a kite murder rate, and that’s not fake news. Chicago is the perfect setting for the retelling of Death Wish.

Death Wish is the most un-Eli Roth film I’ve seen. You couldn’t tell he directed, and in my opinion, that’s a cool thing. Some might throw the term “torture porn” for some of the kill scenes. But, I would argue, calling Death Wish torture porn, is like calling American Hustle a T & A flick because it shows Amy Adams’ side boob. The home invasion scene could’ve been a…

"that sounds like a good scream" "that sounded like a very good scream"

all of roth's movies make explicit the stuff thats unspoken in normal movies, like de palma* crankin up (& to) the shit implied by old hollywood (pre-frenzy) hitchcock, except brian depalma never used splitscreen to put up worldstar memes of his main character cold-blooded murdering a car thief ("when somebody spoils game of thrones"). its disgusting to imagine the world's worst assholes swallowing this as a news report from trump's chiraq (stand-in for oprah & obama & everything black they hate) but all of roth's politics & signifiers fly scattershot to avoid revealing his real target - studio notes aside, death wish is a mess because hes not indulging, hes…

What's maddening to think about while watching Death Wish (2018) is someone like Philando Castile who owned a legally registered firearm and who followed police instructions and who was shot to death by the cops in his own vehicle while breaking no law. I thought about that a lot. This movie is a fantasy of white privilege, of a legitimate use of extralegal assassination by someone just and wise enough to wield it properly. That it is not only some white guy, but the ur-white-guy in Bruce Willis, who is reprising a role of Grumpy White Dude Exasperated With The Slowness Of Authority Engages In A DIY Project, the plaint of every libertarian white dude everywhere who is like 'i…

A stunning subversion of the original source material ala Starship Troopers, Eli Roth takes the faux-cathartic, objectionable murder reveries of the Bronson original and pares away the tough guy grime. The results are pretty horrifying and perhaps even better than my star rating suggests (though there's some dicey plotting here) - fuckhead dad as wanna be superhero, the forgotten white man attempting to assert himself on the world through clumsy, arbitrary violence.

In this sense its an apt continuation of what Roth was working on in Knock Knock (and a move away from the bad, confused politics of Green Inerno), a subtle depiction of upper middle class male dissatisfaction toxifying. Roth is clever enough to not play up Willis' (similarly…

Jan. 2015 - I saw the original Death Wish and was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting the remake to be as horrible as it sounded. I heard conflicting opinions and it was low priority on my watchlist. However, because AMC (4 Santa Monica) canceled their Annihilation screening on Saturday night (thanks for having me drive all the way out there though, AMC, it won't happen again), I was forced to watch Death Wish with my friend.

And guess what. Just like the original, I was pleasantly surprised. I kept waiting for something tasteless, offensive, some extreme political message, but nothing of the sort ever happened. I'm not sure everyone will like this. However, they developed the Bruce Willis character as…

: the conscious or unconscious desire for the death of oneself or of another
- Well, the trailers did not lie: they didn't make it look good...
- I somehow had hopes as I still think that Eli Roth is capable of doing good things (Hostel was good, damnit) and the theme of vigilantism is one that always interests me.
- It's so generic, cliché, badly-paced and safe-for-mainstream-audiences that it's almost a comedy (which, again, was how the trailers pretty much sold it).
- This is the kind of movie where you know who's bad because they overtly act like it, i.e. exaggeratedly so. That's bad direction, unless your aim is to make a comedy.
- Bruce Willis is bad…

Eli Roth é ótimo, e esse filme prova isso.
Desde a primeira cena, o diretor se propõe a mostrar o quão injusto e perigoso é o mundo para o homem branco (a cena do policial morrendo e o atirador sendo socorrido).
O roteiro desenvolve isso em várias esferas, desde a família de Paul, até a sociedade americana, e tudo isso é complementado com uma grande direção, com momentos de criação da tensão, e umas cenas bem gráficas que são assinatura desse grande diretor.
No final, ficamos com uma sátira muito interessante, já que o filme ocorre em um lugar totalmente desconexo da sociedade contemporânea, onde a polícia dos Estados Unidos assassina inocentes, e o acesso às armas muitas vezes trazem…