Maybe reviewers would have been more forgiving of this film if Bruce Willis had sex with a fish.
The mainstream media has a nigh inability to honestly review, or consider with any clarity, the gun-toting vigilante flick Death Wish (1974 or 2018); and it shows in every headline reviewing the film. With cringeworthy liberal millenials giving the film a 15% reviewer score, more level heads in the movie going audience are rating it far more positively, at 85%. Maybe there's a clear class divide that hipster urbanites are shy of confessing.
Both films center on the character of Paul Kersey, and in the Eli Roth film, he's a career trauma surgeon played by an emotionally cool Bruce Willis. The opening has him flatly (a deliberate choice, given what's to come later) offering up scripted platitudes to a Law Enforcement Officer who's just seen his partner die on the table, before heading off to another OR to try and save the criminal who shot him.
Transplanted from a pre-Giuliani NYC to a post-Rahm Emmanual Chicago, a curious factor sets in with the professional reviewers. Take this excerpt from Uproxx:
It's almost as if professional bleeding heart Vince Mancini hasn't been paying attention. Between sipping lattes & tweeting vitriol towards "Drumpf" (reeeee) it looks like he didn't have the time (none of them did, it seems) to actually look up the crime stats in Chicago. That's supposedly the job of an obscure blog like Second City Cop
It's insane that a blonde mouthpiece with hardly an original piece of research to her name like Tomi Lahren lives inside their minds rent-free. (I'm shocked they didn't go with Laura Loomer.) But it's astounding who the far left finds the problem. In this case, people who would take it upon themselves to defend themselves. They honestly hate anyone who refuses to go by their playbook and just remain a complacent victim of circumstance, and that honestly permeates every article of media they control.
It's easy for the Mancinis of the world to emotionally side with the mugger when he's gunned down by the cops. It allows Vince to feel an innate superiority to both the criminal (who he is obviously better than, because of privilige) and denounce the state, thus appearing to be a rebel himself. The left is forever locked in this hypocritical need to denounce authority while simultaneously empowering the state over themselves, over a lack of trust in themselves.
In gun debates, look at how often the first thing that pops into their mind is that a gun would be wrested away from them, and used on them. Look how often they threaten "The state will just send in their troops to take your guns anyways, you can't stand them off!" despite Cliven Bundy's example. Then look at their argument that, while drone striking American expat terrorists in the middle east is wrong, apparently said drone strikes on American soil would be just peachy, as long as it's blowing up people with AR-15s instead of AK-47s.
All this fuming hatred has nothing to do with Bruce Willis' acting perfromance (it was good) or Eli Roth's directing (it was kinetic without being disorienting) nor Joe Carnahan's script (tightly written, and dutiful attention paid to gun safety & responsible sales & usage). The condemnation is of an entire culture that recognizes that 'well regulated' refers to the individual citizen's ability to regulate their own behavior and affairs.
Think about the political movements now centered on preserving hedonism, and that alone. "Slut walks". "Body Positive/Healthy at any Size" models. A pride flag for every form of sexual degeneracy. Compare that to their inability to find a gun-totin' card carryin' "hick" NRA member who's commited a shooting spree. The notion that someone else might be capable os self-control while they are not shames them. And the last thing they can stand to feel is ashamed. The ego of a person with a guilty conscience is that fragile.
This ties into microaggressions, "systemic privilege" and other failed attempts by the left to attack the conservatives. They're trying to find a way to make a person with their life better together than theirs feel shame in the Marxist/crab bucket attempt to drag everyone down into the same hole. If they can make a person dance to their illogical rhythms, then even if they can't sort themselves out, they can prevent someone who can from making progress.
But that's an important aspect of the Heroic Journey. Self actualization, self-improvement, self regulation and self control. Kersey's journey may be, 'go from surgeon to vigilante with a gun', but by montage he's shown to pick up new skills, adapt through cunning and opportunity.
Compare the analysis of the classical Hero on their quest for justice to that of the modern SJW. Many will even self identify with a meme declaring:
And that's why every ticket sale for this film drives the left nuts. So go see it.