'Death Kiss' Trailer: A Charles Bronson Lookalike Blasts Through Criminals
Legendary film star Charles Bronson starred in five Death Wish movies over the course of his career, but the actor passed away in 2003. There have been dozens of knock-off films since then (and even a remake starring Bruce Willis earlier this year), but none like Death Kiss, a new low-budget affair that appears to resurrect Bronson from the grave for another round of revenge against the scum of the streets.
But appearances can be deceiving: that's not a resurrected Bronson or even a digital recreation – it's an actor named Robert Kovacs who happens to look exactly like Charles Bronson circa 1974. Check him out in action below.
Death Kiss Trailer
We're probably only a year or two away from a movie studio securing the rights to a dead actor's likeness and digitally recreating them to star in a mainstream film. Disney has already taken a step toward that by resurrecting the late Peter Cushing for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Marvel Studios has been making strides with digital de-aging for years, most recently showing off a young Samuel L. Jackson in this morning's Captain Marvel trailer.
But until we cross that threshold, why not just use an actor who looks exactly like the star you're trying to evoke? That's what director Rene Perez is doing with Death Kiss, a movie that honestly wouldn't be on anyone's radar without Kovacs' jaw-dropping resemblance to Bronson. The film itself looks completely by-the-numbers, and the trailer doesn't show many of Kovacs' lines – presumably because he's probably not a great actor. (OK, to be fair, I've never seen him in anything, so there's a chance he's perfectly find.) But there's a novelty to this whole thing that's hard to deny, a weird hypnotic pull that makes me want to push all logic aside and satiate my curiosity, even though I'm 99% sure I'll hate myself when I come out on the other side.
Death Kiss is written, directed, and shot by Rene Perez (From Hell to the Wild West), and stars Kovacs, Daniel Baldwin, Richard Tyson, Eva Hamilton, Stormi Maya, Leia Perez, Reese Austyn, and Sam Story. The film will be released on DVD on December 4, 2018. If you're looking for a Death Wish movie that isn't technically a Death Wish movie, be sure to seek out James Wan's grimy 2007 thriller Death Sentence, which features a killer performance from Kevin Bacon.