The "DEATH WISH" Retrospective

From "Death Wish 4: The Crackdown"

BAD GUY
Who the f_ _ _ are you man?

PAUL KERSEY
Death.

The urge to write up a Death Wish retrospective has been strong in me. However, with time limited these days I happened upon a reviewer, Vern at AICN that has his own SITE and has done a great job of writing up the genius of Bronson's five epic vigilante films. So I'm gonna totally rip Vern off and re-post his reviews here. If you love B-movies please check out vern's site, I highly recommend it! I know it's a horrible thing to do, but I don't think I could do it much better than Vern did.

I also want to recommend a great book that's oput called Bronson's Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films by Paul Talbot. I'm in the middle of reading it now, and its a great read. You can BUY it here at Amazon.


DEATH WISH



After enjoying recent DEATH WISH ripoffs and spinoffs like DEATH SENTENCE and THE BRAVE ONE, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the source, and to see those sequels I never got around to watching. (By the source I mean the first Charles Bronson movie and not the book by Brian Garfield, which is apparently similar but clearly anti-vigilante in the end - that's why he wrote the sequel Death Sentence, because he was so mad about the DEATH WISH movie.)

Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, New York architect, happily married father, "bleeding heart liberal," Korean War veteran with conscientious objector status. A cool guy. Then one day a gang of hoodlums (including Jeff Goldblum in his first movie role) follow Paul's wife and daughter home from the grocery store and rape them. Mrs. Kersey dies and the daughter is so traumatized she's hospitalized in a near catatonic state.

Paul's annoying son-in-law (who calls him "dad" way too much for comfort) convinces Paul to take an opportunity to go work on a project in Tucson to get away from it all. Hanging out with ranchers he ends up going to the gun range, where he gets a condescending lecture about how the city wouldn't be so violent if everybody had guns like out here. When he leaves they give him a gun as a gift. So, uh, that might end up being used for something. Who knows?



Of course Kersey ends up in a one man war against crime, going out late at night waiting for people to try to mug him so he can shoot them with his new gun. It makes him feel good. Strangely, he never ends up tracking down or even trying to track down the dudes who attacked his family. Since this was the start of the urban vigilante formula it hadn't yet occurred to them that that was a good way to make the story satisfying. Or maybe they just knew it was unrealistic. That didn't become a part of the formula until part 2.

Obviously nobody likes bullies, and this was at a time when crime was fairly rampant in alot of major cities, so it hit a chord with alot of people. Anybody who ever gets fucked over fantasizes about getting revenge. But the manipulation of the movie is pretty blatant, the way it openly states that Kersey is a "bleeding heart liberal" and basically says that all his values were wrong and now he knows since his wife was killed.

Being made in a more sexist era the portrayals of his wife and daughter are pretty embarrassing to look at now. Obviously an attack like this is deeply scarring but the wife seems to die of fear and the daughter quickly reverts to the mental state of a little girl. She's even that way years later in part 2. It's reinforcing this fantasy for the Tucson ranchers that women are helpless little fragile waifs and that a man's primary job in life is to violently protect them from other predators.



If the movie wanted to really make the vigilantism argument credibly it wouldn't have to stack the deck the way it does, with the hoodlums being these silly cartoons who run around hooting and giggling and randomly attacking people for fun. If that's the way the filmatists see street crime then you gotta figure they're just paranoid, they wet their pants every time they see a longhair or a black guy, then run home and tell their friends they just barely dodged a gang rape. This movie definitely exploits our basest and most paranoid instincts. (I mean jesus, check this out.)

But you know what? I still dig this movie. Bronson is so good at these type of characters that I accept him more like he's a real guy who went a little crazy in a bad circumstances than as thinly veiled audience manipulating right wing fantasy time. So I forgive him. And for such exploitation the filmatism is pretty classy. The elegant and sometimes funky score by Herbie Hancock goes a long way toward making it work. Apparently director Michael Winner's girlfriend gave him the Headhunters album and convinced him to get Herbie. Good job Michael Winner's girlfriend at the time(aka Maria from Sesame Street).

And although the movie seems to be coming out on the side of vigilantism, you gotta acknowledge that there is some ambiguity there, the way at the end Kersey has completely lost it and he starts spouting cliches from the western stunt show he saw earlier. To me it seems to be saying that what he's doing is at least in part inspired by that blatantly fake world - rehearsed, lipsynched, acted out for tourists. And maybe that's why he takes his chance to leave New York instead of dying or committing suicide like alot of people would after a crazy rampage like that. Maybe that's why he doesn't really have a death wish.



DEATH WISH II



For the first DEATH WISH sequel we trade down from Dino DiLaurentiis to Golan and Globus producing. Apparently Menahem Golan almost directed, but Bronson wouldn't do it unless they got Michael Winner back. I bet he said "why get a loser when you can get a Winner?" Anyway we caught a lucky break there. I guess Winner must've broken up with Maria from SESAME STREET by this time so Herbie Hancock was out. Instead he got one of his neighbors to score, a neighbor who happened to be Jimmy Page. I was worried but there's only guitar soloing on the beginning and end credits, the rest is standard old school score, not cheesy '80s keyboards and rockin guitars and shit. So I'm not gonna complain.

It's 1982 now, 8 years later, but they say it's 4 years later. (The magic of cinema.) Paul Kersey lives in L.A. now. His adventures in Chicago (portrayed in the book Death Sentence) are ignored. He's still an architect, h has a new girlfriend (Jill Ireland) and he's moved his daughter to a hospital in California. She's still so traumatized she doesn't speak.

His life seems happy but then he has a run-in with some weirdos in the park. They steal his wallet so he chases one of them down and beats him up in an alley. Very satisfying, but too bad his driver's license was up to date. They go to his house, rape his housekeeper, hit him over the head with a crowbar, kidnap his daughter, then rape his daughter until she kills herself.



One time a guy at the DMV scolded me for not updating my address after I moved, and he said if the police were looking for me they'd go to the old address. I said that was a pretty good case for not updating your address, and DEATH WISH II is another one. If Paul was still carrying around his Illinois driver's license his daughter and maid would still be alive. And those thugs would be wandering around Chicago trying to find him.

This story raises a few questions. In DEATH WISH, Kersey's vigilantism was said to lower the crime rate in New York City. And it inspired other people to stand up for themselves and fight off muggers. But did that last? And is he gonna hafta travel the world to lower crime rates everywhere else, because L.A. of 1982 seems way worse than New York of '74. How's he ever gonna keep up? He's not Santa Claus. The hoodlums here are even less human and more violent than Jeff Goldblum's crowd. They just run around grabbinb people. They giggle and stick their tongues out and swing around like monkeys. Then occasionally they just set up a boombox and dance badly to shitty guitar rock.



A word of warning: the rape scenes in this one are much longer and more graphic, almost headed toward I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE territory. In the Jeff Goldblum future-respected-actor-playing-rapist slot we have Laurence Fishburne as "Cutter", wearing sunglasses like Levar Burton on Star Trek. I read that the U.K. cut has some of that stuff censored but I wouldn't mind. I get the idea.

I always wondered why in DEATH WISH all he needed was a gun. Wasn't he ever gonna get mugged by somebody with more than a switchblade? In II that escalation has taken place, so he does get in shootouts. These guys are pretty pickpockets and crazy rapists, but they trade a bag of coke for machine guns from the mob. Shit is getting crazy out there.



The simplistic approach to issues continues. People Kersey hes call him a hero and refuse to give a description to angry cops who seems to care more about busting him than other criminals. Alot of sticking it to the man goes on in these movies. Jill Ireland's character is very interested in criminal rehabilitation, Kersey kind of plays along and you're probaly supposed to think "isn't it cute, women don't know what they're talking about." An anti-death penalty senator is made to look naive by only giving him one weak sentence to explain his stance.

But since Kersey's tracking down the specific guys who did the crime this time it's hard to get too mad at him. And his methods are extra badass - he calls himself Kimball, wears a knit cap and rents a rathole to use as his headquarters, his hall of urban justice. Meanwhile he's trying to act normal whenever his lady shows up. He keeps having to hide guns or hope she doesn't notice the blood pouring out of his sleeve. For his last kill he has to use her connections and a fake doctor ID to get into a mental hospital where the guy gets locked up for rehabilitation. The craziest part is Kersey proposes to her and plans it so that running off to Acapulco will also be his post-murder-spree getaway. Not too romantic. That's kind of in the same category as Homer Simpson buying Marge a bowling ball with his name on it for her birthday.



There's some pretty good violence. Laurence Fishburne has the best death - he tries to hold up his precious boombox to shield himself from bullets - it gets shot in half in time to see the bullet hit him in the face. But actually my favorite part of the movie is earlier, when Kersey is not yet on the warpath because he's only had his wallet stolen. He doesn't have a gun but he beats the guy up. The guy tries to stab him, he catches the blade in a cardboard box and disarms him. He gives him a few pounds but the guy turns out not to have his wallet, so he tosses his knife over a tall fence. Schmuck.

Then when he goes back to the ladies he doesn't even tell them what happened. He just claims he can't buy ice cream because he forgot his wallet. That's Paul Kersey for you.


DEATH WISH 3



Well, L.A. didn't work out too hot for Paul Kersey. Might as well head home. So Part 3's opening credits show Kersey taking a bus back into New York City, looking out the window to the tune of the most in-your–face, half cheesy/half cool blast of white-man's-keyboard-rock meets jazz-fusion-'80s-cop-movie-establishing-shot-of-the-city theme this side of HARD BOILED. Jimmy Page is back in the composer's chair and comes up with a pretty weird and experimental sound more often than he comes up with the crappy guitar noodling you usually got after LETHAL WEAPON came out. He's still no Herbie Hancock, but he'll do.

Director Michael Winner returns for his last at-bat in the DEATH WISH series, but you immediately gotta wonder what the hell's up because this feels nothing like his other DEATH WISHes. I'm honestly not sure if it's a deliberate artistic choice or a sudden case of not giving a shit, but he has completely removed whatever traces there were of subtlety, thoughtfulness, ambiguity, class or elegance, not to mention realism. It looks cheaper, plays out more clunky and seems to have been made all in a week or so with no time to prepare or to stop to take a breath. And that's exactly why it's the most popular of the sequels. This movie is pretty fuckin nuts.



The first two took questionable morality and made it go down easier with execution that's just a little smarter than the material. No time for that in III. The writing and editing both go for a sometimes hilarious bluntness and minimalism. No beating around the bush. No time to set up or explain things, no time to set a mood, to develop an idea, to linger on anything at all. For example a scene will start with some place already on fire - why bother to show how this starts? Let's just skip to the burning. Maybe the funniest example is the lawyer who Kersey strikes up a relationship with during a few scenes. They start to see each other and before you have time to catch your breathe Kersey has left her in the car for a moment, the bad guys have punched her out, put the car in neutral and rolled it down the hill where it crashed and exploded. And Kersey is pissed but I don't think he 0ever mentions her again. The movie's saying, "yeah yeah yeah, revenge, etc. You get the idea, I'm not gonna blow a bunch of smoke up your ass about it."



In the opening Paul comes to visit a Korean War buddy (who cares why?) moments after a bunch of punks have broken in and killed the poor guy. Then a whole bunch of cops show up and arrest Paul. One cop knows he was The Vigilante so he tells him he can go if he continues killing "creeps." As a reader named Drew B. pointed out to me, "Eastwood shoots 'Punks,' and Bronson shoots 'Creeps.'" Anyway now the story doesn't have to deal with much secretiveness or cops trying to catch him. Just him shooting muggers.

The villains are your standard young white guys with chains and vests. Their leader Manny Fraker has a reverse mohawk and they all paint two lines on their foreheads in his honor. He's a weird looking dude with a good lawyer who, after his first meeting with Kersey, offers to kill a little old lady in his honor. But you can tell underneath the bluster he's a huge nerd. He sounds like such a weiner when he gets on the phone to call in some biker gang reinforcements. "Manny Fraker here..."

The Jeff Goldblum/Laurence Fishburne slot I guess this time would be filled by Alex Winter as "Hermosa." I mean he's mainly known as Bill or Ted (I never remember which one) but I still respect him for directing a movie nobody else knows about called FEVER.

The creeps seem to make up 99% of the neighborhood's population. There are a handful of elderly people or women who live there but if they go outside they're always surprised by a purse-snatching or a gang rape. If they stay inside the creeps climb in the window. So Kersey starts setting booby traps such as a bed of nails on the floor by his window or a plank that swings up and takes a guy's front teeth out. Sadly these traps always go off off screen.



Alot of the movie is Kersey happening to walk around the corner as a crime occurs, then he chases them down and shoots them. He uses a gun designed for African big game hunting, and later a machine gun his late buddy Charlie saved after the war and a rocket launcher he uses to blow Manny Fraker through the side of his apartment. (He ain't getting his deposit back.) The escalation is justified by the rioting creeps who just start blowing up cars, lighting people on fire and hiding on the roofs shooting at any citizen they spot. (More proof that Kersey's vigilantism did not lower New York's crime rate in the long run.)

The battle is painted broadly as a war between old people and young people. About the only time cops ever get involved is when they falsely arrest Kersey or when they come to take guns away from elderly people. (The right wing propaganda is at its all time clumsiest.) It seems like no cops give a shit about the crime at all except the one guy who gives so much of a shit that he secretely authorizes Kersey to execute all criminals on sight. I mean look, Kersey's a good guy, I trust him. But this brings up some constitional issues, in my opinion. Some due process and what not. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this.



But this is a hell of a movie. You can't watch it and not get a little giddy. Whether its stripping down of the cliches DEATH WISH created was intentional or not is something that will require further study. Jim Blanton of Fantasmo Cult Cinema Explosion tipped me off to a book called Bronson's Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films by Paul Talbot. I couldn't find it at the local book stores so I had to order it. As soon as I get it I'm gonna skip to the chapter on part 3 to find out what the hell was the thinking on this one. It seems like the movie that every violent parody of violent action movies in the '80s was directly based on. By normal standards of filmatism it's the worst of the series, but judged by raw force and entertainment value it's the best after part 1.

If you like your action raw, ridiculous and completely ignorant, DEATH WISH 3 is a must-see.


DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN



For part 3 Michael Winner stripped DEATH WISH down to its crudest elements. There was nowhere further to go within. So for THE CRACKDOWN new director J. Lee Thompson (GUNS OF THE NAVARONE, the last two PLANET OF THE APES movies, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, tons of other shit) dresses it back up again. You know this right away from the opening which contains suspense, mood, atmosphere, build, surprise, and symbolism, all forbidden by part 3's strict DOGME style rules.

Kersey is an architect again, and has a family again - another reporter girlfriend with a teenage daughter he regards as his own daughter (we know this because he says "I regard her as if she were my own daughter.") Oh jesus, not more gang rape, right?

Well, we're in luck. Kersey's regarded-as-daughter dies not from an attack but from a cocaine overdose. Kersey follows her boyfriend to the video arcade/roller rink, sees him confront and get stabbed by their dealer, ends up shooting him so his body falls and gets shocked by the top of the bumper car rink.



The admirable thing about this sequel is that the only punk or "creep" in the whole movie is the guy who gives the cops a description of Kersey's car after the arcade/roller rink shooting. Kersey goes after the organized crime figures who get rich off of the drugs that killed that girl. So finally the class conflict of DEATH WISH is reversed. It's not this well-to-do architect going after poor people who dress funny. It's Kersey vs. rich guys who wear suits and live in mansions or penthouse condos. And to enter their world he pretends to be the help, sneaking into a party as part of the catering staff, or pretending to be a worker at the drug front fishpacking plant.

This secret agent business wasn't his idea. A rich guy recruited him. He knows about Kersey's vigilante activities, claims his daughter was killed by drugs too, sort of forces/convinces Kersey to go after the kingpins. He gives Kersey intel (you hear it as narration) and supplies his equipment: sniper rifles, bombs, bugs, uzis, rocket launchers. Everything he needs for a crackdown.



So it's a series of missions and the feel is kind of more THE MECHANIC than DEATH WISH. You start to wonder how he got so fuckin badass just from shooting muggers and being a medic in the Korean war. He does things that usually require a special ops backstory, like in the great scene where he tries to escape the fish plant with about 80-100 working stiffs coming after him. Somehow the comparitive slickness makes it seem more reasonable than part 3, but at times it's just as ridiculous.

He also has a couple great one-liners. My favorite is when a gangster finds him in his kitchen, asks him what he's doing there and he says he was gonna make a sandwich.

About the music, let me say this: the saxophone is a proud instrument. In jazz and funk it can steal the show. John Coltrane used it to channel the planets and the love supreme. Maceo Parker made it funkier than a fat man's ass on a hot day on the bus. But in rock music and especially in action movie it is rarely dignified. This includes HARD BOILED. That may be one of the greatest action movies of all time, and playing the soprano saxophone may fulfill Tequila's need for pre-babyholding badass juxtaposition, but that David Sanborn/Kenny G smooth jazz sound doesn't cut it in my opinion. THE CRACKDOWN uses that type of saxophone sometimes, dating the movie. But I forgive it. In a strange way it's kind of comforting, reminding you of a time when even a lesser action movie, a part 4, could be pretty good.

I know THE CRACKDOWN is not one of the more popular entries in the series, but I like it. I think they were smart to have Kersey's strategy finally progress. Going after the heads of the gangs seems more likely to have an effect than going after street punks (although to be fair Bronson and Michael Winner had already shown this tactic as ineffective 15 years earlier in THE STONE KILLER). It also has a fun thriller structure (even if the twist is pretty easy to see coming) and lots of enjoyable action scenes. Keep it up, Kersey.

DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH




This one finishes off the series, it's a goodbye to Paul Kersey and to Charles Bronson for those who aren't gonna watch the three FAMILY OF COPS movies (the only thing he made after this). I've read that Bronson had Alzheimer's, but he seems completely with it and in good shape.

The year is 1994, Paul has another girlfriend with another daughter. Like part 4 they don't get mugged or raped, but like all DEATH WISH movies they're in serious danger. This time Paul runs afoul of the Irish mafia, specifically his girlfriend's crazy ex-husband Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks, aka Sherriff Earl McGraw from FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL and both GRINDHOUSE movies). We find out Paul is in witness protection now, not on the run, and he calls an old friend at the D.A.'s office (Saul Rubinek) to help him with O'Shea. But of course that makes things worse, so Paul finds himself sneaking around picking off mobsters. It occurs to me that makes it kind of like a slasher movie where you root for the slasher. Oh well.



This installment's strength is its colorful characters. Parks is a great villain, very eccentric, making odd faces, mumbling to himself, sinisterly amused by some joke even his own men aren't in on. And he kills a mannequin, for which he will suffer dearly.

The other most memorable character is Robert Joy (the guy with the burned face in LAND OF THE DEAD) as Freddy Flakes, a schizophrenic hitman who is introduced in drag, is obsessed with security, and suffers from severe dandruff. (Seriously, they make a huge deal about his dandruff.) Paul goes after him with a radio control soccer ball. So we are pretty far away from the tone of part 1 at this point.

The soccer ball scene is great, but my favorite is when Kersey poisons a mobster's connoli in a restaraunt. As the guy is violently choking to death Paul comes over with a big smile on his face and asks if something is wrong. His delight is hilarious.



This is a fun movie, but honestly it feels more like it should be a new Charles Bronson character than another Paul Kersey adventure. The other sequels have more purpose in the overall series. Part 2 is a rehash, a first attempt at continuing the story. Part 3 takes that story to its logical conclusion, showing how ridiculous it is. Part 4 ups the ante, shows him graduating from petty street thugs to higher level criminals behind the conditions that make those guys proliferate. But this one doesn't progress at all. It's mobsters again but with a more personal connection again.

I might be alone on this one, but I enjoyed this entire series. I'm not sure if there's another series with 5 movies and I enjoyed all 5 in their own way. This is a miracle of exploitation filmmaking.

And looking back over these 5 movies - god damn, poor Paul Kersey. His wife was killed, his daughter raped into catatonia. Then his housekeeper was raped and killed, his daughter kidnapped and raped and impaled in an escape/suicide. His war buddy was murdered, his neighbors killed trying to do something about it, his new girlfriend blown up. His next girlfriend's daughter O.D.'d, then she herself was shot to death. Then the girlfriend after that had her face slashed and fell to her death. I mean, this guy should stop talking to other people. Too dangerous. In a way this is a happy ending to the series, because the daughter is still alive at the end. We never have to find out what horrible thing happened to her.



The climax takes place at the dead girlfriend's clothes factory, which hopefully was shut down by OSHA afterwards. They have an open pool of acid, a machine that can grind a man into meat, a machine that plastic wraps a guy. I mean it's just not safe.

At the end Kersey struts away and, his back turned to the camera, says to contact him if you need any help, then it freezes. He looks so confident and so content. Nobody to avenge (except Jeff Goldblum and the other creeps from part 1). This is a good way to remember Kersey and Bronson. He's inside a factory, but he's pretty much riding off into the sunset. And you know what Paul? I'll take you up on that. I will contact you if I need any help.

Thanks to Vern!

CHECK OUT THE TRAILERS:

DEATH WISH



DEATH WISH II



DEATH WISH 3



DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN



DEATH WISH V:THE FACE OF DEATH