Death Wish *** (1974, Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia) – Classic Movie Review 2722

British director Michael Winner’s slick and gritty but unpleasant 1974 vigilante revenge thriller Death Wish finds Charles Bronson in his most famous performance as the initially nice New York City architect Paul Kersey. But he turns into a one-man vigilante army when street punk muggers murder his wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and rape his married daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan) in a home invasion on his own apartment.

Kersey’s solution to inefficient policing is to go out and randomly kill would-be muggers on the streets after dark. His boss gives him an assignment in Arizona, which teaches him the Old West ethics. 

Death Wish is a nasty movie with dodgy morals. But it is professionally made by Winner and sturdily performed by Bronson, both of whom work very hard to keep the protagonist – let’s not say hero – sympathetic.

This helps to make the movie engaging and entertaining as well as popular, giving it an unwelcome platform for the controversial approval of vigilantism and a condemnation of the state of law enforcement.

Though it works capably as violent, low-class thriller entertainment, it is extremely worrying as a rabble-rousing message movie. It certainly captures the mid-Seventies zeitgeist, when late Sixties flower power had turned to sour power.

Vincent Gardenia’s performance helps as the NYPD Lieutenant Frank Ochoa. Gardenia (aka Vincenzo Scognamiglio), who died on December 9 1992, aged 72, was one of the all-time great character actors and is sorely missed.

Four sequels, all with Bronson up to Death Wish V: The Face of Death in 1994, and umpteen copies have followed, increasingly wearily and wearyingly, so far. With Bronson dead on August 30 2003, aged 81, it must be time for a reboot. Indeed a remake is in development in 2015.

Jeff Goldblum makes his film debut in a bit part as a mugger, aka Freak #1, so Michael Winner can be said to have ‘discovered’ Goldblum. Also in the cast are Steven Keats, William Redfield, Stuart Margolin, Stephen Elliott, Olympia Dukakis, Christopher Guest, Eric Laneuville and Kathleen Tolan.

David Engelbach and Wendell Mayes base their canny but cynical screenplay on the novel by Brian Garfield. The novel denounces vigilantism but the film embraces it. Film critics attacked the film for its support of vigilantism and advocating unlimited punishment of criminals. Nobody listened. The film took off, especially in America where crime rates were rising.

And now the movie has a cult following among fans of vigilante films as one of the first to introduce the idea of the lone pedestrian vigilante on the streets.

Garfield was unhappy with the film, calling it incendiary and saying the sequels are pointless and rancid, since they all advocate vigilantism, unlike his two novels, which are the exact opposite. Bronson defended the film as a commentary on violence, attacking it and not romanticising it.

Bronson does of course have other very considerable claims to fame and acclaim – including Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, The Mechanic, and Battle of the Bulge. But, for better or worse, Death Wish is written on his gravestone.

The remake that was in development in 2015 finally saw the light of day or dark of cinema in 2018. It is remade by director Eli Roth with star Bruce Willis as Death Wish, released in the US on 2 March 2018.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2722

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