DEATH WISH

 

Death Wish is a mid-seventies film starring action flick legend the late Charles Bronson. Death Wish--and, of course, its subsequent inevitable sequels--put Bronson on the cinematic map. In the film, Bronson plays an architect named Paul Kersey who's, by all accounts, a bleeding heart "liberal" until his wife and daughter are brutally attacked in their own home by a gang of ruthless thugs (one of whom is played by Jeff Goldblum who made his cinematic debut in this flick). After his wife is murdered and his daughter is raped by said thugs, Kersey becomes a gun-toting vigilante. Even though the man-seeking-bloody-vengeance theme has been mined to death (no pun intended!) in movies before and since the release of Death Wish, what sets Death Wish apart from some--or most--of those other films is that the results of violence are more, shall we say, pronounced than in those other films. For instance, unlike some--or most--of those other "revenge" flicks where the vigilante automatically turns into a bloodthirsty killer after they suffer their horrific tragedy, Charles's Kersey's character seemingly has problems, at least initially so, when he goes out in search of, for lack of a better word, victim; like, for instance, he hesitates when someone tries to mug him. And then, when he finally does shoot said mugger, he goes home and throws up in the toilet. However, he soon gets over his initial queasiness (of course!) and starts hunting down baddies with gusto! I, of course, won't tell you how it ends (even though it's quite obvious Charles's character survives to "star" in the four--count 'em!--FOUR sequels) except to say that Kersey doesn't get to exact his revenge on the thugs who destroyed his family (and, FYI, he doesn't get to exact revenge on said thugs in any of the sequels either, so, no, we don't get to see Charles Bronson blow the head off Jeff Goldblum, damn it!). A sidenote: This movie, as you can probably imagine, drew considerable controversy when it was released as it no doubt would were it released today (especially in the wake of all these tragically recent senseless mass shootings). Many film critics chastised the film for its excessive use of violence. Of course, these were the same film critics who praised other notable violent movies like The Godfather (remember the scene with the horse's head planted in the mobster's bed?). Go figure!