Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Charles Bronson
Hope Lange
Steven Keats
Directed By:
Michael Winner
The Death Wish series is one of those iconic "male" franchises. That's mostly because Charles Bronson made a late action-hero run out of it. I'm not sure that if he wouldn't have put his name on the franchise, it would have been remembered today. Don't get me wrong, it's quite the mesmerizing piece of cinema, but it's incredibly dated. All I could think about while watching the first hour of Death Wish, was David Simon's series The Wire. That makes you wonder about the incredible scope of Simon's work. There are some things you cannot get away with, once that he has exposed with such truthfulness, the nature of street level crime in America. That put in perspective a lot of things about the evolution of action movies in Hollywood and ultimately makes you appreciate the simple, straightforward nature of a charming oddity like Death Wish.
Paul Kersey (Bronson) is an architect (but also a Korean war veteran), who lives in a crime ridden city which I believe to be New York (I'm not sure if it's even told). The streets are filled with muggers that look more like soulless imps than actual threats but they have weapons. A bunch of them follow Mrs. Kersey (Kathleen Tolan) home by looking up her name on the grocery order, proceed to rape her daughter and beat her to death. Disgusted by the lack of action from the system (and probably by his whining and possessive son-in-law Jack), Paul travels to Arizona with hope to find a little solace in an important work contract. Over there, he buddies up with his client Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin) who lectures him about the importance of owning a gun in America. I'll let your imagination figure out what happens when a Charles Bronson played character is basically called a pussy.
Like I said, after watching the five seasons of The Wire, it's impossible to do anything but laugh at those wild muggers Charles Bronson is facing. It's never worked like that. The streets are booming with drug addicts and violent drifters and yet the city is prospering economically. That got me thinking. Death Wish represents a radically different America. It's a perception of America that is scared of itself and scared of difference. There are two camps, respectable people and the chaotic, direction-less ones. We were still far away from the steroid augmented, blood-pumping waxed up warriors who would take the fight to enemy territory. The politics of Death Wish are strictly interior, something that films rarely have the courage to do anymore.
This is where the movie is so paradoxical to me. Theoretically speaking, it's an awesome study about the nature of violence in America. It's not fun violence. Charles Bronson does a decent job at showing how the downward spiral turned him into a street vigilante, but it's about the only decent piece of execution Death Wish got right. On a technical point of view. It's really poor. The actors are clunky as hell, you want Bronson to punch Steven Keats in the face several times only because of his poor performance, the pacing is horrible, the killings are somewhat monotonous and yet you can't look away. Death Wish is an interesting piece of cinematographic history. Of American history I would dare to say. The mechanics are a total disaster though and if Charles Bronson wouldn't have been implicated, I might not even have paid attention to it. My curiosity was stimulated enough for me to try and find out how the Reagan years have affected the evolution of the legend of Paul Kersey.
SCORE: 75%
