Rent Death Wish (1974)

Famous Vigilante Film - Worth Checking Out - Death Wish review by GI

Michael Winner's infamous vigilante film holds up rather well today and whilst it's flawed, violent and controversial it isn't the sadistic film that is often rumoured. It continues Winner's obsession with death that flows through all his films in particular those he made with Charles Bronson in the 1970s. Symbols of violent death litter the film, including hangman's nooses and swastikas for example. Narratively and thematically the film does revel in the law of the gun and Winner can't help but interlink the story with the frontier violence of the western albeit the west is about myth rather than the reality of the social problem of gang violence in modern day USA. (Interestingly Arizona, the landscape heart of the western is depicted as a peaceful and beautiful place over New York as a pit of depravity. One character claims this is because they have a very open relationship with guns) The main issue with the film is that Winner randomly switches his message from support of the actions of the vigilante to a gentle condemnation perhaps intending the viewer to also switch. In my opinion the film's coda leaves little doubt that the main protagonist grows to relish in killing. The story is fairly simple. A humble city architect, Paul (Bronson) is left distraught when his wife is murdered by muggers and his daughter raped. He tries to come to terms but when a colleague gives him a gun as a present Paul carries it for self defence and after killing a mugger starts to prowl the city streets looking to kill more. Meanwhile the police begin a search for the vigilante fearing copycats and a loss of control. The film attacks police methods as ineffectual and the narrative has an interesting political angle when officials have to decide on how to deal with him. Not as violent as some may think (although the swearing is full on for a mid 70s film) this is entertaining and a good example of Bronson's work as a lead actor (I always think he's an unlikely one at that). There were four sequels to this film with part 2 being a very nasty film and none of them are worth your time nowadays. A 2018 sequel from director Eli Roth is also a waste of time but this original is perhaps ripe for reassessment.

Exploitation Melodrama. - Death Wish review by Steve

There have been vigilante pictures going back as far as the dawn of the western, which usually also share a conservative agenda. But this is surely the source of the present day surge in urban revenge fantasies. The agencies of the state are corrupt- and unmanly- and the only way the self-reliant individualist can protect his family is with the gun, and his own moxie.

And it inspired four sequels of its own. Charles Bronson plays a middle class/aged pacifist whose faith in liberal democracy is demolished by the sexual assault on his daughter and murder of his wife. So he fights back against the junkie inferno of 1970s New York. Naturally he guns down the muggers and rapists with his old wild west style Colt revolver.

There is that grim/gritty location photography suggestive of New York during the bin strikes, scored by Herbie Hancock. Plus it's the role that made Bronson an international star. But the script is a foolish polemic which doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It pushes the buttons with such fatuous reasoning that it becomes more idiotic than an emotive, voyeuristic crowdpleaser.

OK, this is an entertainment which isn't in search of realistic solutions. The tide of feral delinquency is the stuff of right wing nightmares, and its pro-gun propaganda will land better with that kind audience. But for everyone else, the simplistic manipulation eventually feels insulting. The social protest films made at Warner Brothers during the depression are far more sophisticated.