It’s Bruce Willis in a sequel to M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable? Nope.
Bruce Willis took over for Denzel Washington in the sequel to The Equalizer? Nope.
But the remake of 1974’s Death Wish is another vigilante action thriller just the same. Willis is back in his Unbreakable hooded sweatshirt and he’s adding another entry into the long list of films in the modern vigilante sub-genre. We all must like the good guys getting rid of the undisputed bad guys, one way or the other, because Hollywood keeps giving us more vigilante movies. Just look back to this abbreviated list of predecessor films: Dirty Harry (1971) (and all the sequels), Billy Jack (1971), Walking Tall (1973), Coffy (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Mad Max (1979) (and its sequels), The Star Chamber (1983), Batman (1989) (and all its superhero emulators and incarnations before and since), Out for Justice (1991), Falling Down (1993), Nowhere to Run (1993), The Crow (1994), Timecop (1994), Kill Bill (2003), A Man Apart (2003), Walking Tall (2004), Man on Fire (2004), Sin City (2005), V for Vendetta (2005), Munich (2005), Shooter (2007), Taken (2008), Kick-Ass (2010), Machete (2010), The Equalizer (2014), and Deadpool (2016).
Charles Bronson (The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Twilight Zone, The Magnificent Seven, Never So Few, House of Wax, Pat and Mike) was 53 years old when he made the first Death Wish, and 72 by the time he made the fifth and final film in the Death Wish series. Bruce Willis is 62, so we’re in the right neighborhood for re-casting the role of a husband and father out for payback after his wife is murdered and daughter assaulted. Willis’s character’s ill-fated wife is played by Elizabeth Shue, seen most recently on TV’s CSI, but most memorable from Karate Kid, Cocktail, Back to the Future II and III, and Leaving Las Vegas, where she earned an Oscar nomination. The film co-stars Vincent D’Onofrio (The Magnificent Seven, Daredevil, Men in Black).
Check out this first trailer for Bruce Willis in the remake of Death Wish:
