A wishy-washy exploitation movie, which doesn’t show any real verve until the climax.

Although he races through the occasional blasts of gritty action, Roth slows things down whenever Paul corners one of the people who killed his wife, the director sinking his teeth into long torture sequences or terse dialogue scenes that are punctuated with shocking flashes of gore.

Eli Roth’s Death Wish isn’t a bad movie as far as super-violent exploitation flicks go. But it is a deeply problematic one. And that problem boils down to this: It’s the absolute wrong movie at the absolute wrong time.

But the real problem is that the picture feels padded. There are endless, and pointless, scenes of radio hosts debating the vigilante violence. And the wildly mismatched shoot-outs — every criminal Kersey goes up against is slow, stupid and a lousy shot — waters down the thrills.

As soon as Willis deploys his trademark smirk, and the comfortable vengeance of tracking down his wife’s killers while avoiding detection takes over, it just becomes a million other B-movies about lowlifes getting what they deserve.