First Look: Bruce Willis in Eli Roth’s Death Wish remake!

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

One of the movies I'm looking forward to checking out the most come November is Eli Roth's remake of DEATH WISH starring Bruce Willis. We shared Roth's thoughts on the remake as while back now and today we have your first look at Willis in character!

Yes, Yahoo just premiered several first look stills of Mr. Bruce Willis in action in Roth's remake, along with some choice new bits of info the HOSTEL director dropped on the site. All of which you can see (and read) below!

Eli Roth on DEATH WISH:

We wanted to bring back that great, classic Bruce Willis we all know and love and just do a fun, badass update of a revered classic. I wanted to bring Bruce back to that Fifth Element, Unbreakable, Die Hard glory and have him craft another iconic performance, and I really think he did it. I mean I really think this can be his Taken. The fun is watching him go crazy and watching someone slowly move the moral goal post.

We tried to keep it real, but this isn’t the movie to fully tackle that subject matter because it’s so grim and it’s such a big problem, you’re not gonna solve it in a film like Death Wish.

Willis, like Charles Bronson, plays Paul Kersey. But unlike the original film, the new Kersey is a Chicago surgeon. Roth also had some comments about Bruce Willis' new Paul Kersey:

What’s interesting about Death Wish is it’s not a CIA guy who’s coming out of retirement, you know, he’s not John Wick, he’s not a professional assassin. He’s a normal guy, he’s a surgeon, he’s a dad, he’s never picked up a gun in his life.

And with each kill as he gets closer to finding the people that did this to his family, he gains a new skill. He gets better and better and better. So by the end of the film, he’s really much closer to John McClane… The very things that make him a good surgeon are what eventually make him a great killer.

One of the interesting things the site points out is that Roth's influences were films like David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and EASTERN PROMISES. Along with such other films as SICARIO and MAN ON FIRE.

The article then goes on to say that the new Paul Kersey "learns how to handle steel by watching YouTube videos and at one point almost gets 'merked' by his own ricocheted bullet."

Which all sounds good to me! If not a bit too much like James Wan's DEATH SENTENCE… but that's fair considering the source material comes from Death Wish.

How excited are YOU for Bruce Willis in Eli Roth's remake of DEATH WISH? Make sure to hit us up on social media and elt us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!

DEATH WISH hits this Thanksgiving.