>Eli Roth seems to be remaking genre movies as political theater. His new film, Death Wish, follows his two previous, wonderfully provocative films. Knock Knock anticipated the current bastardly #NeverAgain trend while The Green Inferno parodied the Occupy movement. In Death Wish, Roth razzes the gun-control movement. He confronts the political status quo (what other mainstream filmmakers indulge as civil-rights issues) with his own refreshing impudence.
>Roth rethinks the story of the 1974 Charles Bronson–Michael Winner vigilante hit Death Wish. The bad reviews Roth has received indicate that we are in a period when reviewers are uncomfortable with analogies to their own political posturing. The vigilante option — taken by upper-middle-class Chicago surgeon Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) after a home invasion devastates his family — seems to offend critics as if they themselves were accused of harboring not-nice thoughts.
>Kersey’s ideological quandary (his profession is saving lives while living in an environment of social chaos and rampant carnage) is presented in intimately personal terms. It’s what used to be called barroom philosophy: What would you do? That same question made Liam Neeson’s Taken franchise a popular Millennial hit, arousing primal reflexes worldwide. But by going back to a “classic” from the American Renaissance of the’70s — when controversy used to draw across-the-aisle audiences — Roth digs beneath simple impulses. The opening sequence, in which Kersey saves a cop-killer’s life against another cop’s protestation, turns the film’s title into a moral question.
>Neil Jordan’s The Brave One (2007) remade Death Wish with poetic sensitivity, but Roth is hyper-aware of the virtue-signaling that trivializes today’s pop culture in movies such as Three Billboards and TV shows like The Good Fight. Subverting those pious assumptions is part of his challenge. Having made his name with the alarmingly effective Hostel movies, Roth doesn’t go for the gut the way Taken or the Bronson film did; the narrative mechanism here seems almost matter-of-fact. (Torture-porn Eli surfaces only in a couple of Kersey’s later, wickedly funny revenge-killing scenarios.) But take note of Roth’s culture-shock stratagem of combining social realities with cinematic recall: Glock 17 in hand, Kersey searches for the marauders and, donning a Trayvon Martin–style hoodie, takes to the streets as a phantom vigilante.
>These exploitation movie instincts are more honest than the PC button-pushing by Martin McDonagh, who based Three Billboards on implausible Americana and his own political hysteria. Roth’s references to Chicago’s surging murder rate pinpoints a right-now social crisis. The film’s black and white local radio commentators (Sway, Heather B, and Mancow) call Chicago “City of Death.” Their cross-racial indignation is clearer than the hodgepodge of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015), while their civilians’ ambivalence about the rampaging vigilante nicknamed “The Grim Reaper” brings home the same moral complexity as Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman.
Aiden Cooper
>Death Wish is not on the same level as Snyder’s work, evidenced in the dazzling ethical whirligig of Suicide Squad, but when Kersey is told, “You defended your family like any man would,” Roth evokes both personal and social responsibility. A satirical commercial for Jolly Roger’s gun emporium leads to a split-screen montage of Kersey in surgery and on a firing range. Controversial ideas fly like bullets, yet Roth and screenwriter Joe Carnahan never resort to using that TV-debate canard “gun violence.” Instead, an investigating police team (white male, black female) informs Kersey about the city’s real-life emergency of “asshole-on-asshole” violence. Each detail critiques Chicago’s exploitive Democratic government. How did Roth get a filming permit past Mayor Rahm Emanuel?
>Roth skirts the racial subtext of Chicago’s murder statistics, but no thinking viewer can avoid making associations about violence, poverty, and race that other mainstream media ignore, even after the Parkland, Fla., massacre. Roth and Carnahan could have thought out these associations more — a vigilante scene with a drug dealer named “Ice Cream Man” suggests wild potential — yet it’s so rare to see filmmakers express conservative social leanings that one is simply grateful they include references to both Milton Friedman’s Essays on Positive Economics and C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Sebastian Cooper
>But Roth is a movie guy, so it’s important to notice how Willis’s stoical characterization (referred to as a “scrapper” in younger days) seems a world-weary update of John McClane, the ethical smart-ass of the Die Hard movies. Political-stooge film critics miss the point that Willis’s fin de siècle heroism has aged into a bald, mournful but still manly figure, like a military veteran who transitions into politics. Stooge critics also miss that Roth has cast Elizabeth Shue and Vincent D’Onofrio as Chicagoans, each in differently tragic supporting roles. This Adventures in Babysitting reunion between former ingénue and superhero in that memorable urban night-world tale of 30 years ago (which is still superior to the Safdie brothers’ Good Time) gives Roth his most poignant political statement: Our movie innocence is over.
Armond and Eli Roth truly are /ourguys/.
Nicholas Jones
Is there any time where Sup Forums disagreed with Armond White? Or, to put it more accurately, is there any time Armond White disagreed with Sup Forums?
Austin Adams
>his Adventures in Babysitting reunion between former ingénue and superhero in that memorable urban night-world tale of 30 years ago (which is still superior to the Safdie brothers’ Good Time)
how could Armond be so based?
Jace Robinson
If I ever see the word based again I gonna kill someone.
Ayden Mitchell
This poster seems okay. In fact, he might even be based!
Jackson Reed
Based black man dropping truth bombs
Joseph Clark
>the contrarian black guy likes the film that has been universally shit on by critics
What a suprise
Cameron Mitchell
Have you read many of the reasons they shat on it?
Carter Kelly
Based on this post I would say you’re not based
Eli Phillips
>film critic gives in depth review of film >but dude, the bloggers didn’t like it because muh NRA
Brandon Martin
>All reviewers are part of a political conspiracy except Coontrarian here
Evan Perez
Is there anything more sad than Armond apologists? He literally waits over a week until after a films release to see what the consensus is and then goes the opposite way, with a few exceptions now and then. Just because he uses long words in his reviews doesn't make it any less true.
Robert Reed
There is no conspiracy, you assfuck. It's just that most reviewers are lefties or even hardcore SJWs and openly push their agenda, while there are very few conservative filmcritics
Cameron Cox
Armond liked Hidden Figures.
Aiden Rivera
Long live the king
Liam Anderson
no one here saw Hidden Figures. They were just mad that black women were in a movie about NASA. even if you hate the premise and its not historically accurate doesn't mean that the film isn't necessarily bad.
Jaxon Nguyen
Armond does it again.
Adam Scott
A significant number of us genuinely almost always agree with him and muhpol Redditors just keep crying.
The actual woman made Blake Griffin look like Wesley Snipes and they cast her as a sassy soul sister. I hate bland modern blaxploitation disguised as actual film in general. It's entirely possible I'm unfairly lumping it in.
Ryder Morris
>he literally puts time into his reviews and doesn’t follow the film critic prepburger memo You do realize that leftist critics literally have a memo that they pass around to each other that informs them of what their review is supposed to say, right?
Isaac Roberts
>It's another Armond was right again thread
Liam Thompson
I just heard that this remake exists is it actually a good movie or shity? Its impossible to tell based on reviews when RT/MC are both compromised by politics in both directions
Ethan Green
What did Armond mean by this?
Eli Bailey
He's right.
Only the first movie was decent as a family film and I suspect I only think that only because I was a kid when I saw it. The others are utter garbage.
Hudson Rodriguez
He’s a film critic who wants to assess the film’s relevance to contemporary culture and so he needs to research other reviews to get his finger on the pulse of film criticism. Not hard.
Levi Cooper
Im conflicted. A literal gay negro is my king.
Samuel Scott
These are the same people that praised fem busters and the last Jedi, they're fucking cunts. Based fag nigger telling it like it is.
Ethan Rivera
>while their civilians’ ambivalence about the rampaging vigilante nicknamed “The Grim Reaper” brings home the same moral complexity as Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman. He did it agian! He managed to fit Zack Snyder and BvS on yet another review. I love this guy. Non ironically. I really love this guy.
Gee. I sure wouldn't want to be Mel Gibson right now. No, sir.
Jonathan Hill
not only did roth get btfo, but he loves tmz
Bentley Lee
When you post obscure who gives a fuck doodles as a response youd best be sure it's known only to you, you chu chu cock swallowing Faggot!
Xavier Nguyen
...
Parker Martinez
>wonderfully provocative >Knock Knock >The Green Inferno
Mate...
Joshua Gray
Eli Roth has never made anything good outside of his fake Thanksgiving trailer.
Ryder Taylor
...
Alexander Garcia
Look, you can agree or disagree with Armond, but he does put in an effort with his reviews.
There's an actual analysis and explanation instead of, "I loved it! 9/10 Fresh."
Jackson Robinson
this. i wish i could write as well as him. sure it's pretentious but it's a refreshing change in tack from rote phrasing and hashtags and such.
Brayden Phillips
It’s not particularly strong but mostly harmless. Wildly varying in tone and a little bland.
Jaxon Cox
I’m having flashbacks to that Fembusters review where someone literally used the phrase “chemistry like a thousand fire emojis” and that more than anything is when I stopped trusting modern journalism.
Asher Barnes
That’s true. Even if some of what he’s saying makes no sense, at least it’s an actual, legitimate voice saying these things.
Aiden Collins
This. Armond is redpilled on the Safdies' Jewish wallowing nihilism.
Jacob Walker
Of course he likes it, don't want to upset white daddy now do we?
