Bruce Willis has a new movie coming out, in case you haven’t heard. It’s a remake of “Death Wish,” the sadism revenge porn thriller starring Charles Bronson from the 1970’s. In each movie, an older professional man — Willis is a doctor and Bronson was an architect — sees his family brutally murdered by thugs, and decides to take the law into his own hands by becoming a one-man wrecking crew.
I saw the original Death Wish in the 70’s on cable, when I was a young kid, and I remember that even though I generally liked violent action movies, there was something over-the-top sadistic and cruel about the movie that unsettled me and turned me off. It glorified ultraviolence and vigilantism, reveled in human misery, and propagated the notion that there’s nothing wrong with being judge, jury and executioner, justice system be damned.
The new Bruce Willis version of Death Wish is scheduled for release March 2, and judging by the previews, which are ubiquitous on virtually every major TV channel, it looks equally violent and ruthless. The sad thing is, Bruce Willis is a great actor who’s had a long and storied career, and one wonders why he’d stoop to making vengeance porn at this late stage in his career.
But there’s the rub. Bruce Willis is now 62 years old. No one would go so far as to say he’s a has-been, but he’s clearly not the top-billing man he was in the 80’s and 90’s. So what gives? Perhaps he felt the need to reassert his masculinity and leading man machismo-status, and what better way than in an ultraviolent big-studio blockbuster?
Charles Bronson did the same thing for the original Death Wish. When the movie was released in 1974, Bronson was 53, a little younger than Willis, but still beginning the slow decline into obscurity. And Bronson had had a respectable career that included films such as Apache, from 1954, the popular TV series Gunsmoke from 1956-58, The Great Escape, from 1963, and The Dirty Dozen, from 1967.
But Bronson was never the typical leading man that Willis was. He usually played a tough guy, a gunslinger in the Wild West, with a weary attitude and a weather-beaten face. So perhaps Bronson, at age 53, saw a chance to reinvent himself to a whole new generation of moviegoers with Death Wish, by playing a serious man administering violent justice to young punks.
Whatever the case, Death Wish spawned Death Wish 2, 3, 4 and 5, each more brutal and unforgiving than the last. And by the end of the series, not only had Bronson avenged his family’s murder, he’d killed off an entire generation of would-be thugs and criminals.
The question that nags at me, though, is do these movies really contribute anything to society? I mean audiences flock to them, because we all know violence sells. And if violence sells, ultraviolence sells out. So there’s that.
But what message are we sending to our children, and to society at large? That it’s OK to brutally slaughter scores of people in the worst way possible if they wronged you in any way, laws and government be damned? And when the audience cheers the latest Bronson or Willis killing in the film, are we not simply emulating the Romans cheering the gladiators at the Coliseum? The whole thing leaves me queasy.
Other older actors have gotten in on the ultraviolence trend as well. The Northern Ireland actor Liam Neeson is one. After a brilliant career in films such as Schindler’s List, Les Miserables and Michael Collins, in 2008, at age 56, Neeson appeared in Taken, a revenge porn thriller about a man whose daughter and her best friend are kidnapped. Neeson meticulously hunts down and brutally tortures and murders the kidnappers.
This film is often cited as a turning point in Neeson’s career, redefining him as an action star. But he was an action star already with films like Michael Collins. So why did he need to make such an ultraviolent, sadistic film with no redeeming qualities, warmth or humor to it? Maybe it was the paycheck? Or maybe he, like Bronson and Willis before him, wanted to reassert his machismo as he entered his late 50’s? Neeson would follow this up with a slew of other ultraviolent films, including Taken 2 and Taken 3, creating a death franchise at a late stage in his career, the same way Bronson did, and presumably Willis hopes to do.
And then there’s Jackie Chan. Loveable, cuddly, acrobatic, funny and exciting Jackie Chan, the Hong-Kong born actor who’s starred in more great, popcorn-filled and family-friendly films than I care to recount. Some of the most notable include Cannonball Run, Police Story, Rumble in the Bronx and Rush Hour.
But in 2017, he released The Foreigner, in which he plays a Chinese restaurant owner in London whose daughter is killed in a bombing. The IRA may be involved, and there are other unsavory baddies as well, but Chan hunts them down and brutally kills them all. The film was praised as an example of Chan “playing against type,” but in reality it’s just another example of sadistic revenge porn carried out by an aging star. Chan was 63, like Willis, when the film was released.
So what does this survey of aging actors and their turn toward ultraviolent films tell us? I’m not totally sure. For one, maybe the money is just too good to pass up. Number two, they may be feeling a loss of virility as they age and are no longer capable of playing romantic leads or sex symbols anymore.
Or maybe, more likely, they’re just mimicking the turn in society, which is toward ever more violent movies, sadistic video games, violent dystopian literature, and a political climate characterized by extreme conflict and polarization.
Whatever the case, it’s a trend I know I don’t like. And I, for one, would like to see Bruce Willis back with Cybill Shepherd in the 1980’s TV series Moonlighting, playing a loveable private detective. Or Jackie Chan teaming up with Chris Tucker in Rush Hour to foil the bad guys, all in a fun and humorous way that lets the audience feel good about themselves.
Because nothing about these ultraviolent movies with aging stars lets the audience feel good about themselves. And I, for one, like to feel good, or be moved, or at least think, when I watch a movie. I mean, isn’t that the point of cinema?
Thankfully, in an attempt bring balance to this, James Cameron is bringing Sarah Connor back for Terminator. He also pointed out—like you did very well in the article above—about the phenomena and recent emergence of aging male actors in action flicks, and notes the lack of similar female action hero roles, let alone ones for older actresses suitable for 61-year old actresses like Linda Hamilton.
Separately, I recently re-watched Death Wish with Bronson: it wasn’t as violent as I remembered it. I think it was a product of its time: pre-Bernie Goetz, in the 1970s when NYC was undeniably more dangerous. It’s safer out there now (maybe the reason why they placed the remake in Chicago, where there have been a spate of gun deaths?). But overall, violent crime has gone down dramatically everywhere and especially in NYC. I wonder if the remake was inspired by the gruesome home invasion murders in Cheshire, CT where the only survivor was a doctor, since Willis seems to be a doctor whose family is brutalised. And it would seem that it’s purpose, like in the 1970s, is to serve as a kind of a violent revenge porn of sorts to make people who feel that the world is more violent than it actually is and that they might have some measure of agency in what is otherwise a random and chaotic world.