Death Wish Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs

5. The Tone Is All Over The Place

Death Wish is a film that fundamentally has no idea what it wants to be. Is it meant to be a satire? Is it just a schlock-fest? Or are we actually supposed to take it all seriously?

The film's tone fluctuates from a funereal level of seriousness to wacky silliness on a whim, resulting in a severe bout of mood whiplash throughout.

For instance, Kersey visits a gun shop a few times throughout the film, where there's a clear emphasis on the absurdity of gun fetishism. This seems to imply the movie is in on the joke, but moments later, something totally horrific will happen, and it's back to typical, humourless usual. At least until Kersey's revenge spree becomes a bad series of Internet memes (seriously).

It's a film pulled in several different directions at once, not one of them especially satisfactory or all that interesting.