Bruce Willis is about as convincing as a successful surgeon
as he is at playing a grieving husband who becomes a gun-toting vigilante. The
Charles Bronson sleeper hit of 1974 struck such a nerve because of the times in
which it appeared, when middle-class people were fed-up with the rise of violent
crime in the big cities. Robbed of this context, without replacing it with
anything timely or relevant, this remake has no more bite than any other
run-of-the-mill crime thriller. The real mystery isn’t why it was made, and
made so un-interestingly, but what on earth happened to Eli Roth? Maybe he hasn’t
been a major director, but he seemed to have a little something going on that
was worthwhile. At least on the basis of Cabin Fever, Hostel and The
Green Inferno – an informal trilogy about the horrors of culture clash –
Roth was on track to go on making future (maybe far future) cult
classics. Not paying attention to the credits while the film was playing, I was
amazed afterwards to realize that Roth was the director, because there was no
evidence of anything but a hack’s work behind the camera. His personality is
nowhere to be found, as it is so strongly in his earlier films.
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