Death Wish

Death Wish (1974) is a good counterargument to conservatives who bitch about "liberal Hollywood." Lambasted by most critics on its release, it was embraced by audiences sick of crime, hippies and liberals. Today it plays poorly, an abrasive, amoral and sadistic right-wing fantasy.

Mild-mannered architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is shocked when his wife (Hope Lange) is killed, and daughter (Kathleen Tolan) raped by thugs. With the NYPD unable to track them down, Kersey goes west to try and forget about past events. After spending time with a gun-loving client (Stuart Margolin) in Tucson, Kersey comes back to New York with a .32 revolver and a grudge against all criminals, going on a killing spree of muggers and hoodlums. Kersey becomes a popular hero, leaving police unsure how to deal with him: after all, he's doing law enforcement's job much better than them!

Conservative backlash movies and revenge flicks were a staple of the early '70s, as much a product of their time as hippie garbage like Billy Jack. Don Siegel's Dirty Harry stands out as the best because it's a good cop film outside of its posturing. Death Wish doesn't have much to offer outside of Charles Bronson shooting muggers, and while that's fun to a degree the movie is far too strident to ignore its message.

Set in John Lindsay's New York, depicted as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy," Death Wish is as obnoxiously slanted as something like The Chase. Every street corner conceals a mugger, every subway commandeered by knife-toting goons, and you aren't even safe in your own house. Early on a character calls for the "underprivileged" to be placed in concentration camps and there's little to dissuade us from this view. Kersey's mission isn't even really revenge since he doesn't bother targeting his wife's killers; he's an avenger for all aggrieved New Yorkers, and the film even shows him inspiring other vigilantes.

Death Wish makes no bones about endorsing Kersey's violence. The obvious comparison is Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, which also turns a meek liberal into a killing machine, but Michael Winner's hack direction and Wendell Mayes's hamfisted script can't touch Peckinpah's disturbing artistry. While Peckinpah bemoans humanity's propensity for violence, Winner embraces it as a positive good and stacks the deck so we can't possibly disagree. Screw the liberal courts and the ineffectual cops: get a gun and blow away malcontents yourself.

The movie was a big hit in 1974 and still has a following today. Obviously audiences took comfort in the depiction of an Everyman taking on the "sickness" of post-Vietnam America, and some viewers still find its message appealing. Our old friends at Big Hollywood uphold Death Wish as a masterpiece for its "uncompromising truthfulness." I suppose people are entitled to their fantasies.

Personally, I wouldn't even call Death Wish "conservative" because of its naked contempt for law and order. Rather, it's an extreme celebration of individualism, making Kersey John Galt with a .32, "[holding] the omnipotent cure of being able to act." I'm inclined to agree with Vincent Canby's characterization of the film as "self-righteously inhumane," glorying in its sadistic violence as a celebration of individualism at any cost.

Charles Bronson has never registered strongly with me as a leading man. I've always enjoyed his work in ensembles like The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen, but despite commanding screen presence he isn't much of an actor. We have no problem buying Bronson as a vigilante but the attempts to paint him as a bleeding-heart liberal in the early going is laughable. Bronson would be typecast in this role, reprising his role in four Death Wish sequels and playing vigilante characters again (Murphy's Law) and again (The Evil That Men Do).

Most of the supporting cast is one-note and forgettable, playing annoying ciphers: Vincent Gardenia's clueless cop, Hope Lange's Stepford wife. More interesting is the slew of future stars/ in bit parts: Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park) as one of the attackers early on, Christopher Guest (The Long Riders) as a beat cop, Saul Rubinek (Unforgiven) as a subway thug, and Denzel Washington (supposedly) as another goon.

Death Wish is an extremely grating film. It's essentially a conservative response to Stanley Kramer "message films," replacing impassioned speeches with bullets and beatings. Unfortunately for Michael Winner, poorly-handled cinematic violence can be just as obnoxious as a Spencer Tracy stemwinder.