Death Wish (1974)What's that saying about revenge? Oh wait...there are a lot of them, and almost all of them condemn the act. Yes, but then...what about justice? It's the question everyone has asked themselves at one point or another, what the difference is between the two. Death Wish (1974) is a tale of revenge born from injustice. Architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) lives an affluent life in New York City, while violence and tension lurks behind every shadowy alley and every dark corner. (Heck, it's even at the grocery store.) It is inevitable, then, that in this world of violence, that it would be visited upon his loved ones. His wife, Joanna (Hope Lange), and his daughter, Carol (Kathleen Tolan), are violently assaulted, and Joanna dies from her injuries. Paul channels his grief into a cold rage that itself appears to channel the fury of a nation tired of feeling like victims.
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Death Wish was considered a provocative movie when it released fifty years ago, but I believe that it is for the wrong reasons. To be frank, it isn't that good of a movie, even though the concept itself is compelling. (It was adapted from a novel of the same name by Brian Garfield.) The simple synopsis of the plot that most people think of is that a man gets fed up with all of the crime and goes on a brutal campaign of extreme vigilante justice against all the thugs and hoods that make life horrible for good, decent folk. Sure; in the context of the film that works, because all of the thugs are two-dimensional scum that flourish knives and guns with abandon and spew obscenities. The cynical tone of the movie is set in cold, hard stone early on with the contemptible violation of the home and family by a few "freaks" (including Jeff Goldblum in his first screen appearance). The thugs are evil, and unapologetically so. And their violence leaves permanent scars, even for the survivors, like Paul. But something is wrong with this picture. It isn't just the portrayal of scumbags as scumbags. No--it's how Paul reacts to it all. His background, his lifestyle, his readiness to assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner somehow feels more disturbing than the violence that preceded it. I think that it's evident from the moment he goes to the bank and asks for twenty dollars in quarters; cutaway to him putting them in a sock and swinging it like a bludgeon. I've never felt that Charles Bronson was the most expressive actor at the best of times, so my first thought watching this was that he was (truly) all wrong for the role of a grieving widower. It wasn't until I stepped back and really looked at just what kind of person Paul may be that I came to a different understanding...one that put the whole picture in a different light. For some time, I actually thought that Don Siegel directed Death Wish. Of course I was mistaken; it was Michael Winner. But Siegel did direct another "get tough on crime" classic made a few years earlier: Dirty Harry. Squint, and you could mistake these two erstwhile spaghetti Western colleagues as brothers, cut from the same cloth. But in Paul's case, he doesn't appear to start out this way. But, golly, he gets there by the end, smirking as he makes a finger gun at a few hoods in Chicago, having been kicked out of NYC by the cops for doing their job better than they could. Ladies and gentlemen...our hero.
There's nothing defensible about the hoods and freaks in Death Wish, true, but there's an almost complete absence of emotion from Paul (at least on the surface) even from the moment he's informed by an all-too-casual doctor that his wife didn't make it. You get a crucial counterpoint to Paul's steely countenance, thankfully, from his son-in-law, Jack (Steven Keats). As Carol falls deeper into catatonia from the emotional shock, Jack's grief is more outwardly visible, calling into question more and more Paul's denial of it. In a sense, Paul refuses to accept the loss, but it seems somehow less about the death of his wife than about an attack on his perception of his way of living. Life has (otherwise) been good to Paul. He holds a key position in a real estate firm, and probably makes a great deal of money. His wife can have her groceries delivered to her apartment, and they live in an apartment building with a doorman. Yet, as Jack observes after the tragedy, they could have just as easily lived outside of the city and commuted in, already consigning the city to be a corrupt and unsafe realm, which from the tone of the film, it unequivocally is.
There is an informative scene in Death Wish that comes after Paul has flown to Tucson to help negotiate a land deal, and recalls to a good-ol'-boy client named Ames (Stuart Margolin) that his father died in a hunting accident, and for much of his life he disdained guns. He was even a conscientious objector and combat medic in the Korean War. In an earlier office discussion with a co-worker, he expresses attitudes toward crime that would be described as "liberal", even apologetic--the kind of comment oft attributed to "champane socialists". It reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Rizzo: "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before." All of this "softness" gradually changes by the time he returns to New York. Ames has (recklessly) gifted him a .32 caliber pistol, which becomes his method of exacting revenge on the scum of the city. At a staged cowboy show in Arizona, Paul looks on with increased interest at the simulated violence, watching the "sheriff" mete out justice to the outlaws, and it's clear that he sees himself in the role of the adjudicator of "justice". He sees that the law cannot be counted upon to keep the streets safe (he's not wrong), but in his existential crisis, decides to proactively clean up the streets by himself, even deliberately using himself as bait on subways while incidentally inspiring others to follow suit. Paul even puts the question to Jack about whether it is okay for people to just run away from terror in fear, or rise up to face it. (Too bad he didn't consider Paul's reply more carefully.) This is the core question of Death Wish, and the film has a very specific answer to it, even if it isn't the most comprehensive or nuanced one. The reason that I believe that this movie is provocative isn't just because of the rampant violence, the shallow depiction of crime, or even the suggestion that justice can only be found in your own hands. No, I believe that it is provocative because it should (and does) provoke its audience into considering why we feel satisfaction at seeing violence inflicted upon others, no matter how badly they deserve it. My suspicion is that the audience for revenge films are largely comprised of people who have experienced injustice before and wish that the world were otherwise...that someone would acknowledge the iniquity. Death Wish went on to spawn several sequels that appear to fetishize the violence, but the message in the first film remains a strong (yet cautionary) one. It is one that doesn't come with an easy answer. TV and movie violence is fine--it's just a fantasy. But be careful trying to apply those same black-and-white values which some believe that they profess to reality, because life is a lot more complicated than that.
Recommended for: Fans of a violent revenge flick that almost transcends its rough and unfinished production values with its central conceit and the surprisingly understated character development of its protagonist. Revenge movies like Death Wish were on the rise in the Seventies, and much has been said about that. Personally, I'd recommend the likes of Straw Dogs over Death Wish any day of the week, as it's really tough to look at Charles Bronson and see him as mild-mannered or as a conscientious objector. You're just waiting for him to unleash righteous fury on those thugs and freaks in every frame and scene, and everything else that isn't a shootout makes the movie drag.
There's nothing defensible about the hoods and freaks in Death Wish, true, but there's an almost complete absence of emotion from Paul (at least on the surface) even from the moment he's informed by an all-too-casual doctor that his wife didn't make it. You get a crucial counterpoint to Paul's steely countenance, thankfully, from his son-in-law, Jack (Steven Keats). As Carol falls deeper into catatonia from the emotional shock, Jack's grief is more outwardly visible, calling into question more and more Paul's denial of it. In a sense, Paul refuses to accept the loss, but it seems somehow less about the death of his wife than about an attack on his perception of his way of living. Life has (otherwise) been good to Paul. He holds a key position in a real estate firm, and probably makes a great deal of money. His wife can have her groceries delivered to her apartment, and they live in an apartment building with a doorman. Yet, as Jack observes after the tragedy, they could have just as easily lived outside of the city and commuted in, already consigning the city to be a corrupt and unsafe realm, which from the tone of the film, it unequivocally is.
There is an informative scene in Death Wish that comes after Paul has flown to Tucson to help negotiate a land deal, and recalls to a good-ol'-boy client named Ames (Stuart Margolin) that his father died in a hunting accident, and for much of his life he disdained guns. He was even a conscientious objector and combat medic in the Korean War. In an earlier office discussion with a co-worker, he expresses attitudes toward crime that would be described as "liberal", even apologetic--the kind of comment oft attributed to "champane socialists". It reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Rizzo: "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before." All of this "softness" gradually changes by the time he returns to New York. Ames has (recklessly) gifted him a .32 caliber pistol, which becomes his method of exacting revenge on the scum of the city. At a staged cowboy show in Arizona, Paul looks on with increased interest at the simulated violence, watching the "sheriff" mete out justice to the outlaws, and it's clear that he sees himself in the role of the adjudicator of "justice". He sees that the law cannot be counted upon to keep the streets safe (he's not wrong), but in his existential crisis, decides to proactively clean up the streets by himself, even deliberately using himself as bait on subways while incidentally inspiring others to follow suit. Paul even puts the question to Jack about whether it is okay for people to just run away from terror in fear, or rise up to face it. (Too bad he didn't consider Paul's reply more carefully.) This is the core question of Death Wish, and the film has a very specific answer to it, even if it isn't the most comprehensive or nuanced one. The reason that I believe that this movie is provocative isn't just because of the rampant violence, the shallow depiction of crime, or even the suggestion that justice can only be found in your own hands. No, I believe that it is provocative because it should (and does) provoke its audience into considering why we feel satisfaction at seeing violence inflicted upon others, no matter how badly they deserve it. My suspicion is that the audience for revenge films are largely comprised of people who have experienced injustice before and wish that the world were otherwise...that someone would acknowledge the iniquity. Death Wish went on to spawn several sequels that appear to fetishize the violence, but the message in the first film remains a strong (yet cautionary) one. It is one that doesn't come with an easy answer. TV and movie violence is fine--it's just a fantasy. But be careful trying to apply those same black-and-white values which some believe that they profess to reality, because life is a lot more complicated than that.
Recommended for: Fans of a violent revenge flick that almost transcends its rough and unfinished production values with its central conceit and the surprisingly understated character development of its protagonist. Revenge movies like Death Wish were on the rise in the Seventies, and much has been said about that. Personally, I'd recommend the likes of Straw Dogs over Death Wish any day of the week, as it's really tough to look at Charles Bronson and see him as mild-mannered or as a conscientious objector. You're just waiting for him to unleash righteous fury on those thugs and freaks in every frame and scene, and everything else that isn't a shootout makes the movie drag.