A remake by any other name smells just as stinky, if you ask me.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there have been a ton of remakes this summer? First we had The Invasion, the Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig remake of the 1956 sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This being the umpteenth remake of this movie, I didn't really care. More accurately, I didn't care to waste my money seeing it. Nothing will ever top the original starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter in my mind.

A few weeks later, we got Halloween, the new version of John Carpenter's 1978 classic. Purporting to add new elements to the Michael Myers character, this film claims to be not so much of a remake as a reinvention, or what I like to call, "the Batman Begins cop-out." Whatever. Again, not gonna waste my money on a movie I saw more than 25 years ago.

Now along comes Jodi Foster in The Brave One, the story of a woman who goes on a violent vigilante rampage through New York after her boyfriend is beaten to death by thugs. Can you say Death Wish?

What bugs me more than anything is that the makers of The Brave One don't even acknowledge that this is a remake of Charles Bronson's 1974 hit movie.

Let's see... in Death Wish, Bronson plays a mild-mannered New Yorker whose wife is killed by muggers. He begins stalking the city late at night to confront criminals and kill them, and becomes a vigilante hero to the public.

In The Brave One, Foster plays a mild-mannered New Yorker whose fiance is killed by muggers. She then begins stalking the city late at night to confront criminals and kill them, and becomes a vigilante hero to the public.

I'm sorry, what's different about this movie?

The Brave One comes right on the heels of Kevin Bacon's latest flick, Death Sentence, also about a mild-mannered New Yorker who turns to vigilante crime after his son is killed. Ironically, this movie is based on the novel by Brian Garfield which was the book sequel to Death Wish, also written by Garfield. But the movie version of Death Sentence has been altered so much it doesn't really qualify as a sequel to Death Wish at all.

As for The Brave One, producers and even Foster herself would have us believe that this isn't a remake of Death Wish because the main character is a woman, which supposedly brings more complexity and depth to the story, and emphasizes the inner turmoil of Foster's character who is hungry for vengeance, yet struggling with the fact that she is now a criminal herself.

Put your boots on folks, the BS is really piling up.

Look, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And the same goes for Charles Bronson. It doesn't matter what they call it, The Brave One is a remake of Death Wish, no matter how you slice it.

Will it be better? I don't know. I might just waste my money this time to find out.

Ethan Morris: "Not always right, but never in doubt." Go ahead and write me.