Movie Kumite: Death Wish vs. The Mechanic

In Hollywood, everything old can be new again which is why we continue to get more and more remakes, reboots and revived franchises every year.

At some point over the last decade, somebody remembered (or perhaps realized for the first time) that Charles Bronson made some popular films in the 1970’s and 1980’s and that the Charles Bronson remake well was one that had gone untapped.

In this edition of the Movie Kumite, 2011’s The Mechanic (a remake of Bronson’s 1972 original) and 2018’s Death Wish (a remake of Bronson’s 1974 original) battle it out in our cinematic slugfest…

THE ANTI-HEROES

To their credit, neither Bruce Willis or Jason Statham attempted to do the impossible and try to recreate the Paul Kersey and Arthur Bishop characters the way Charles Bronson portrayed them. Both men put their own spin and personality into the characters and did so knowing they were essentially going to be in a no win situation with fans of the originals. You can’t argue why either man was cast… both were (and still are) legit action movie heroes. So who was the better Bronson inspired anti-hero? I gave the nod to Bruce Willis and I did so because he came into his Death Wish movie on a similar path that Bronson came into the original. Bronson was not a Hollywood darling, much of his success and notoriety prior to 1974’s Death Wish was from movies he did overseas. Willis, who at one point in his career was a Hollywood A-Lister, had fallen from grace with the Hollywood elite. Prior to his role in Death Wish, Willis was relegated to making one direct to video movie after the other and his days of being in a theatrical release seemed like a distant memory. That similarity was enough to give Willis the slight edge over Statham and give Death Wish the first point.

DEATH WISH (2018) – 1 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 0

THE SIDEKICKS

Ben Foster did a great job as Steve McKenna, the apprentice to Arthur Bishop and ultimately the man who will betray Bishop. Without McKenna there is no story, there is no movie. McKenna is an essential character… Meanwhile, 2018’s Death Wish decided to introduce us to Paul Kersey’s brother Frank (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) a character that served absolutely no purpose. I kept waiting for him to play some major part in the story… like Frank pissed off some bad people and he was the reason his brother and his brother’s family were targeted… but no, he was just sort of there kind of like the annoying son-in-law from the original.

DEATH WISH (2018) – 1 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 1

THE KILL COUNTS

Who did the most damage in their respective film? Was it doctor turned vigilante Paul Kersey? Or was it professional mafia hitman Arthur Bishop? Kersey put up some respectable numbers for a first timer with 12 total kills to his credit (with the best of the bunch being the one where he got an assist from “jack”). But 12 kills looked like amateur hour compared to Bishop’s impressive 17 kills.

DEATH WISH (2018) – 1 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 2

THE CRITICS

Critics have been known to put up some impressive kill count numbers themselves as they bury movies with their reviews. But the critics we will turn to for the purposes of this Movie Kumite are those who have contributed to two of the most respected movie sites in all of the Internet… IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes.

The Mechanic’s 6.6 rating narrowly edged out Death Wish’s 6.4 rating over on IMDb.

Death Wish fared much better with the audience ratings over on Rotten Tomatoes with a 73% rating over The Mechanic’s 51% rating.

DEATH WISH (2018) – 2 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 3

THE SOURCE MATERIAL

When you remake a movie there are some creative concessions that are to be expected. In the case of Death Wish and The Mechanic, the originals were made in the 1970’s… the remakes came decades later when the world was a much different place.

But I can not and will not concede one major decision that 2011’s The Mechanic made and that was the decision to not kill Arthur Bishop… one of the greatest things about the original is when Bronson’s Arthur Bishop kills Jan-Michael Vincent’s Steve McKenna FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! McKenna betrayed him, but Bishop gets the last laugh… it was the perfect ending… but 2011’s The Mechanic decided it would rather leave the door open for a sequel instead of going with the perfect ending. This is inexcusable in my eyes.

Meanwhile Death Wish did flip the geography (the original stared in New York and ended in Chicago, the remake started in Chicago and ended in New York), but otherwise stayed true to the source material for the finale (for the purposes of this argument the source material is the original movie and not Brian Garfield’s book). And with that said Death Wish ties things up!

DEATH WISH (2018) – 3 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 3

TIE BREAKER

We are all tied up and for only the second time in the illustrious history of the Movie Kumite, I am turning to Bulletproof Action’s followers on social media to serve as tie breakers.

Polls were put on our Facebook and Twitter accounts and the results were combined… The Mechanic ran away with the victory with 67% of the vote, to Death Wish’s 33%.

FINAL SCORE: DEATH WISH (2018) – 3 THE MECHANIC (2011) – 4