"They called him a guardian angel."
"If a man really wants to protect what's his, he has to do it for himself."
— Ben
In this remake of the 1974 crime classic, Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a Chicago surgeon who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is hospitalized. With the police not being able to help with the murder, Paul decides to take matters into his own hands and bring the ones responsible for the attack on his family to justice. As he kills any criminal he encounters, he soon catches the attention of the media who begin to wonder if he is a grim reaper or a guardian angel.
This is the very first film released by Mirror Releasing, now called United Artists Releasing.
Previews: Trailer 1
, Trailer 2.
Death Wish contains examples of:
- Adaptational Job Change: Paul was an accountant in the novel, and an architect in the original film series. Here, he's a surgeon.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: In the original Death Wish, the crooks that raped and killed Kersey's family were just a bunch of random crooks that came and went into the New York City dark and Kersey never encounters, because he doesn't knows anything about them other than "they exist". In this Death Wish, they are soldiers of Knox, and Kersey gets the satisfaction of wiping them all out.
- Big Bad: Knox is the one responsible for leading the crooks who killed Kersey's wife.
- Chekhov's Gun: Or rather Chekhov's gun storage unit. A coffee table with a concealed compartment for quick access to a rifle is seen early on, advertised by a gun shop . This, or something similar, is seen again in the film's climax.
- Contrived Coincidence: Right after Paul decides to get a gun, he conveniently acquires one that falls off a victim he is treating at the hospital. Despite the gun falling off him in the middle of a crowded operating room full of medical staff, no one notices the gun fall to the ground or Paul picking it up.
- The Dragon: Tate "the Fish" Karp.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Unlike the crooks in the original, most of the crooks during the first home invasion are strictly there to rob the Kerseys. Only Joe seems inclined towards rape, but he is told multiple times by his two cohorts “no fucking games” regarding Jordan, and is even stopped from getting handsy with her.
- Guns Akimbo: Kersey briefly wields a machine gun and handgun during the final showdown.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Kersey uses some of his medical knowledge against Joe, one criminal among those who had harmed his family, to get information on the rest.
- Lighter and Softer: While it's still an R-rated, violent movie, it's much lighter than the original 1974 movie and especially Death Sentence.
- Manly Tears: Kersey sheds these after his wife's murder and when Jordan awakens from her coma.
- Mercy Kill: Ben puts a deer out of its misery after it's fatally wounded by poachers in the beginning.
- Railing Kill: One mook is killed like this during the final showdown, after being shot with a machine gun and handgun by Kersey.
- Sequel Hook: Much like the original, the movie ends with Kersey pointing a finger gun at a mugger, suggesting his vigilantism will continue.
- Shown Their Work: Kersey's first outing as a vigilante results in him getting a nasty gash on his left hand from having an improper grip on his gun. "Slide bite" is a relatively common injury among untrained shooters like Kersey, as the two police detective investigating the shooting quickly notice.
- Sympathetic Murderer: There is debate about this among people in Chicago, but most of them view Kersey this way. Even one of the detectives on the case seems to, although he still can't prove Kersey did it.
- Vigilante Man: Just as in the original film, Paul Kersey begins a one-man war against criminals after a criminal gang murders his wife and seriously wounds his daughter.
