Death Wish Review: 2 Ups & 7 Downs

Ups...

2. The Savage, Well-Executed Violence

Eli Roth may not have directed a particularly interesting-looking film here, but he did at least deliver as far as the gnarly violence is concerned.

For instance, a sequence in which Kersey murders a drug dealer in broad daylight is legitimately, viscerally effective, touting a matter-of-fact approach to murder that the movie was desperately in greater need of.

Elsewhere, there's a fairly amusing torture sequence in a garage, where Kersey crushes a man's face with a car jack in all the grisly detail you'd expect from a Roth movie.

These moments of fitful, cathartic violence aren't frequent enough, but they do press the right buttons when they eventually happen. Clearly if the film felt like less of a procedural and more of a trashy B-movie, it would've been much more entertaining.