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DEATH WISH (Rated R)

Ostensibly a remake of the Charles Bronson revenge thriller of 1974, the similarly titled “Death Wish” is a modern parable of vigilante justice to avenge a brutal homicide on the mean streets of an urban wasteland, this time most appropriately in Chicago.

As far as big cities go, Chicago is not as bad as Baltimore or New Orleans for the murder rate but it’s not for lack of trying. Crime stories about the Windy City abound on a daily basis.

Bruce Willis’ Dr. Paul Kersey, a surgeon at a Chicago hospital, is a loving husband and father. He and his wife Lucy (Elizabeth Shue) are about to celebrate an anniversary while daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) is getting ready to start college.

While the doctor is on duty one fateful night, Lucy and Jordan are at home and soon attacked by three brutal, vicious intruders, leaving the wife shot dead and the daughter clinging to life while in a coma.

After giving two detectives (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise) time to solve the crime, Kersey decides to take matters into his own hands, especially when his attempt to be a Good Samaritan to rescue a stranger on a dark street leads to his beat-down by street thugs.

The mild-mannered doctor starts taking target practice and gets involved in some street justice like a guardian angel. Local radio talk show hosts debate whether Kersey, so far unidentified and disguised by a hoodie, is a hero or the Grim Reaper.

Stalking the streets to search for leads, Kersey encounters and kills random scum of the earth that he is only too happy to spare the criminal justice system the trouble of putting on trial. What’s more he seems pretty good at the detective work.

Meanwhile, Kersey’s brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio) becomes increasingly concerned about his sibling’s odd behavior, but then he understands the agony of losing a loved one and that the system has failed.

Central casting has done a good job of finding a slew of bad guys, all of them with tattoos and bad attitudes, to populate the film as potential targets for Kersey’s ire. Arguably, they all stock characters who could also have been in a Liam Neeson revenge fantasy film.

A lot of critics have become almost apoplectic in trashing “Death Wish,” a film which is more likely than not going to resonate with a lot of folks who don’t mind seeing the good guy take down a bunch of dirtbags. It’s all a matter of one’s perspective about scum and villainy.



RED SPARROW (Rated R)

Any hope that “Red Sparrow” would make for an exciting spy thriller gets pretty much crushed as soon as Jennifer Lawrence’s ballet dancer Dominika Egorova winds up in a Russian spy school training to use her seductive wiles to advance the dubious goals of her mentors.

A once promising career as a Bolshoi dancer ends with a serious injury. The seductive Dominika is recruited by her uncle to work for the state, and if your only desire is to see Jennifer Lawrence naked and tortured, “Red Sparrow” is still not worth it.

Consider yourself warned that this wannabe John Le Carre thriller is a vile piece of nasty business, and should be shunned at all costs. Some of the plot elements are nothing more than extremely disturbing “torture porn” that are best forgotten.

Another problem with “Red Sparrow” is that the story makes little sense unless you really like the faux complexity of countless double-crosses in the spy world, though figuring out what Dominika is thinking is not only challenging but ultimately unworthy of consideration.

Taught to use her obvious beauty to seduce and manipulate American CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), Dominika becomes conflicted with her assignment when romantic sparks start to fly, but then both parties need to remain wary of each other.

The main part of Dominika’s motivation to become a soulless tool of Russian depravity is to get medical help for her sick mother and to keep the apartment to which she was no longer entitled after leaving the Bolshoi Ballet.

Getting back to the cruel torture business, Nate suffers a terrible fate at the hands of a truly sadistic Russian agent, and though he survives the ordeal, the audience is forced to watch this gratuitous violence that is alarmingly depressing and nauseating.

“Red Sparrow” might be compared in some quarters to last year’s “Atomic Blonde,” but any similarity should not be held in a favorable light. Jennifer Lawrence is no Charlize Theron when it comes to action thrills.

“Red Sparrow” is simply for the birds, and is easily one of the lamest films to waste the talents of notable supporting actors like Charlotte Rampling’s matron of the spy school and Jeremy Irons’ Russian official.

Worst of all, Jennifer Lawrence, having won a Best Actress Academy Award at a young age, has not been served well lately, adding “Red Sparrow” as another dud after last year’s egregiously bad “mother!:

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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