Navigation

Death Wish (1974)

Dir: Michael Winner

Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returns to New York after a sun drenched, restful holiday with his Wife Joanna (Hope Lange).
The hard cold streets are a far cry from soft sandy beaches though. Crime is the big news topic as Paul returns to his job as a big company Architect.

While he is working, three drugged up street freaks (one played by a young, and even more weird looking Jeff Goldblum) break into his apartment.
They beat Joanna to death and sexually assault his Daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan).

The Police admit they have little hope in catching the attackers and as his son-in-law Jack (Steven Keats)
tries to cope with Carol, who has slipped into an almost vegetative state since the assault, Kersey slowly decides that it's about time that some personal justice was dished out to New York's criminals.
And so, with a gun given to him by satisfied client Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin), he prowls the city's mean streets as 'The Vigilante'.......

 

A truly iconic 70's title, "Death Wish" has for too long been at the mercy of uptight and snobbish criticism. It became almost trendy to use it as a stick to smash into oblivion the career's of both Bronson and it's Director, Michael Winner.
Wrongly labelled as crass, mindless and absurd, it is in fact a serious (if at times exploitative…but more on that later) and gritty urban character study about the damage a violent act does to a decent man.

The script by Wendell Mayes (from the novel by Brian Garfield) takes its time in realistically depicting Kersey's build-up to vigilantism.
Paul (a stoic but effective performance by Bronson, though he is not the screen presence he was pre-moustache era!) tries to work though his loss by throwing himself into his work and fighting for the sanity of Carol with Jack (a nice low-key and sympathetic turn by Keats).
But after his trip to Tucson for his company and his time spent with Ames Jainchill (who loves guns, has a hard-line attitude to crime and believes a man should protect what's his) coupled with the realisation that his Wife and Daughter are simply another couple of statistics in a city full of statistics he, rightly or wrongly, comes to the conclusion that the victims and potential victims, should fight back.

But this course of action is not for the most part portrayed in a cliché macho manner. Kersey is shown to be completely obsessed (especially as he takes more and more risks to go out on the streets) with finding and killing criminals.
It's made very obvious that he is trying to fix, or perhaps ignore, his own hurt and psychological problems with his actions. And this attempted self-healing, whether consciously or subconsciously, is just as important to him as the actual 'cleaning up' of the criminals.
And despite the perception of the film as a non-stop violence-fest, it's actually well into the film until Bronson's Kersey becomes a vigilante and the violence is never that explicit away from the initial home assualt.
And again, this choice of vigilante action is realistically portrayed. At first Kersey is unsure of himself and his actions, he does not slip into the role of killer easily. He's scared and clumsy at the start and after his first run-in with a mugger he returns home deeply shaken and after shooting his first criminal he flees to his home and throws-up. There is nothing here, working within the limited time-frame of a movie, that comes easy to Kersey.
And that he never finds the actual people that attacked his Family, adds a cruelly ironic bit of realism.

Away from reality though the film has to deliver on the entertainment front, and as such Kersey lives in a sinister fantasyland of dark corners and roaming dangers. Of course New York (like all big cities) could be a violent and dangerous place…but going by "Death Wish" every street is a lottery where violence and death is the prize.
True, Kersey does later go out of his way to bait muggers, but the threat level is still overheated and overstated.
But ultimately it's a film about a vigilante and so without any criminals the film could not exist. As such the way New York's dangers are portrayed is a cinematically valid one.

The home invasion sequence is brutal, frenzied and IS exploitative. But Winner has a fine line to tread.
He has to portray the horror of the attack as the Kersey's life is torn apart and to show how Carol is molested and brutalised. But images such as Carol being stripped and having her backside spray painted and Joanna being brutally coshed (accompanied by viscous language from Goldblum) can't help but be exploitative.
But ultimately Winner just manages keeps the exploitation secondary, something he would most certainly not do in home invasion sequence in "Death Wish 2" where he would give a Studio film one of the most extreme and exploitative sequences ever seen.
As for the rest of the film, the various shootings are mainly bloodless, but some excellent editing of the action makes them seem more violent than they actually are.

Humour is not something you would expect in such a grim story line, but Vincent Gardenia's World-weary Cop (working on the 'Vigilante' case) supplies some cynical laughs.
Gardenia gives a wonderful little performance as he tries to catch a killer, keep the press happy and deal with the shady goings on in City Hall, as they try to keep the fact that mugging statistics have drastically fallen since 'The Vigilante' picked up his gun.
More obvious humour is delivered in a TV news report that shows how; hyped up by Kersey's actions, other New Yorker's are' having a go'. We have an elderly Black woman who fought off muggers with a hat pin, and some construction workers who dealt out a good kicking to another mugger…but are at a loss to explain his injuries, and state he must have slipped over!
And comedy fans will get a kick from seeing a very young Christopher Guest as a Cop, 10 years before he essayed 'Nigel Tufnel' in the superb and ever popular "This is…Spinal Tap".

Away from all of the above, the movie's other strength is it's atmosphere and striking location shooting.
This is prime 70's big city filming. Full of the sights, sounds and street characters that will be familiar to fans of such classics as "Taxi Driver".
Cinematographer Arthur J Ornitz fills the screen with a mixture or urban chaos and concrete desolation.
From darkened parks to neon streaked main streets, New York is truly shown as the ultimate concrete jungle.
To any fan of 70's cinema and the 70's low life highlights of places like 42nd Street, "Death Wish" delivers much to wallow in.

Another plus is the off the wall and amazingly varied musical composition by Jazz legend Herbie Hancock. He creates a score made up of sweeping strings for scenes of happy Married life, funked up grooves for the street scenes of hustlers, pimps, whores and the general criminal fraternity and many almost surrealistic soundscapes for the scenes of abrupt violence and the effects of the violence on Kersey. It's really a case of the music becoming a vital part of a film's atmosphere and energy.

Ultimately then we have a movie that has perhaps been damaged by it's far less serious and complex sequels (especially the hugely entertaining but truly exploitative and vicious "Death Wish 2") and by unfair bashing in general from holier than thou critics, but it's also a movie that delivers the goods as an engaging character piece, atmospheric urban thriller and expertly crafted slice of 70's exploitation.
It deserves more respect for the fine movie it is and it's also one of the rare times where a Studio film really captures that 70's 'Grindhouse' vibe of it's skuzzier Indy relations that kept 42nd Street cinema's stocked at the time.

Essential 70's viewing.