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Rating:  -
An early scene has Paul Kersy standing in his living room, swinging a sock full of quarters to ever mounting glee, a scene intentionally reminiscent of the bone brandishing ape-man in 2001 Space Odyssey. In the last scene of the movie, a freeze frame, (having declared early on the modern fixation with firearms a penile substitute), has Kersy making the "gun" sign in front of a fetching lass's business section, his manhood reclaimed. This movie isn't about revenge as it is an initiation of a pacifist, and his gradual ardor, to violence as a birthright. This is born out from the transition of Kersy's marital contentment and city life complacency, to the brilliantly drawn out middle section of his mundane and muddled attempt to readjust to new circumstances without anything to justify such efforts. Considering that the outcry against the movie has less to do with violence and more with the audience's complicity with the main character, this is easy territory for the likes of a Cronenberg
Rating:  -
I'd seen bits and pieces of this over the years, but never the whole thing straight through until now. Charles Bronson is Paul Kersey, a successful New York architect in a happy marriage, with a son and daughter-in-law. Right away the film telegraphs its POV about violence, when one of Kersey's coworkers calls him a knee-jerk liberal and, knowing it's a Bronson film, we can see that an awakening is about to happen.
For those who don't know the story, I'll make it brief. Kersey's wife and daughter-in-law are viciously attacked by a trio of hoodlums (including a young Jeff Goldblum) in Kersey's apartment; his wife dies and the daughter-in-law is left so emotionally scarred that she never recovers and ends up in a sanitarium. In the early scenes, before and after the attack, we see a crime-infested New York where violence is casual, everyday, all over - and a police force that is powerless. Bronson undergoes a slow metamorphosis - to the credit of the film, he clearly has doubts about what he's doing - as he decides to take the law into his own hands upon finding that the cops can't do anything. Interestingly, he never really speaks out against the police though his son more than once says "nobody can do anything." At first he just puts some rolled-up quarters in a sock and carries it with him as insurance, at one point fighting off an attempted mugging - but after a lengthy trip to Tucson where he makes friends with a client who turns out to be a gun collector, he decides to arm himself seriously, and a one man (and five movie) war on crime begins...
This got lambasted by liberal film critics when it came out, of course, just as DIRTY HARRY had three years previously, but what's interesting about it today is how low-key the attacks on liberal values are, and in fact the film really doesn't go after anything except on-the-street violence. Of course it completely ignores class and race issues, except for one brief comment where somebody at a party mentions that there are more black criminals than white - it basically just treats all "criminals" as scum who enjoy preying on their victims. It does get a bit more disturbing as it goes along, and we see Kersey acting first, deliberately getting himself into situations where he might be in danger, and then blowing people away before they even have a chance to go at him. No question that the morality here is decided skewed to the right, but as I say, not so much as you might expect given its reputation. Probably the most extreme part is at the very end, when the rather sympathetic police detective (Vincent Gardenia) who's been in charge of hunting down "the vigilante" lets Kersey go - but given the vision of the city this film gives us, this isn't really unexpected.
The film-making though is quite solid; one thing director Michael Winner - never the most subtle or "artistic" of filmmakers - can do is propel a story forward, with very little in the way of needless exposition or explanation. We don't need that much here; Winner and Bronson are creating an archetype, and they seem to know it. The New York locations are well used, and Bronson is...Bronson. Great music by Herbie Hancock.
Rating:  -
DEATH WISH is a film that you ALWAYS want to watch--it's entertaining and even engrossing and has the great title. I guess many of us have at one time or another wanted to be Paul Kersey--getting rid of urban thugs & slugs with impunity and getting away with it [minus the personal tragedy Kersey incurs, of course!]. All about an architect whose wife and daughter are brutalized by a gang of thugs--wife is killed, daughter left a vegetable. Justice is slow a'coming so Mr Kersey decides to vacuum clean the streets of New York of it's anti-social vermin with a gun. Daughter's second rape while recovering from the first nightmare is gut-wrenching--pretty callous stuff here. Stark & sterile New York locations complement Kersey's lonely but resolute mission well. Why only 3/5 stars ?? Maybe I'm not being fair but I think this could have been an even better film if in the proper hands. First, the sociopaths in this film were annoyingly 70's-ish: rag-tag, ridiculously pretentious and amateurish, most not even intimidating [the same occurred in the subsequent awful DEATH WISH sequels]. Second, the movie loses all credibility when the NYPD decide to translocate rather than arrest Kersey due to fear of public opinion. Too bad, as Bronson was memorable in his role but did not seem to have the production support he deserved. That last arriving-in-Chicago scene where Kersey aids a lady whose bags have been knocked off her by a group of thugs--he feigns aiming a gun with an unforgettable smirk--is a beaut, a simply AWESOME ending shot that makes this film worth the price of admission. Gotta find a poster with this scene somewhere! Great vicarious fun.
Rating: -
If you're a fan of urban adventure..., the worst of the bad guys doing horrible things to innocent people..., cops unable to stop them..., and a vigilante stepping in to save us all, BUY THIS MOVIE! Don't look for an Oscar winning performance, just a lot of action, and a lot of fun. You'll find yourself pulling it out on a winter afternoon, and enjoying it over and over.
Rating: -
Charles Bronson(R.i.p.) Is the man,in his first deathwish movie, this one, Although it is violent (at least at the time) this movie is a masterpiece just as Eastwood In Dirty Harry and Chuck Norris Flicks, the movie is not for the faint of heart or hippies.There is disturbing parts that I rather had not seen.Overrall Tragic movie.
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