Topic: The Box Office
Director Joe Carnahan recently announced via Twitter that he’s working on a remake of Death Wish. Maybe I’m psychic: My last post for “The Box Office” was a review of that 1974 Charles Bronson classic.
Writing for NRO, Anthony Paletta predicts that the critics are likely to hate the new Death Wish, just as a previous generation of critics reviled the original. And their hatred is likely to derive from the same source: a leftie ideology that romanticizes crime and demonizes the forces of law and order. He points out, for example, that whereas Pauline Kael condemned Dirty Harry for “fascist medievalism” and called it a “single-minded attack against liberal values,” she adored Bonnie and Clyde.
But who knows? The Death Wish remake may turn the original story on its head, transforming Paul Kersey into a right-wing Tea Party thug and the criminals he hunts into downtrodden representatives of the 99%. I hope not, for a remake more or less true to original would cause every progressive critic in America to toss a blood clot—and that would be fun to watch. But it’s all too easy to imagine a politically correct Death Wish 2012 that coddles the criminal element while crapping on middle-class values.
