The original Death Wish

When I had the free preview of all the movie channels over the Thanksgiving weekend, another movie that I got the chance to record was the 1974 original version of Death Wish.

Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, an architect in New York City with a wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and married daughter. He's successful enough to take vacations and live in a nice apartment, at least by early 1970s New York standards. This of course is the era as I like to describe of of just before President Ford telling the city to drop dead. (Not that Ford said that of course, but that's how the Daily News interpreted the president's desire not to bail out the bankrupt city.) Times Square was seedy, and crime was much higher than it is today, although on the last point it should be mentioned that the high crime rate wasn't just a New York City thing.

Anyhow, it's that crime rate that's important. One day when Joanna and her daughter are going to the grocery store, they arrange for the store to deliver the groceries, since carrying that many groceries in the big city is a pain. A couple of hoodlums in the store hear this and take a look at the address for the delivery, so they're able to go up to the Kerseys' apartment and claim to be the grocery delivery. Gaining entry in this way, they then proceed to savagely beat and rape the two women.

Paul and his son-in-law go to the hospital, where they learn that the daughter is going to recover, but that Joanna just died. This is long before the use of DNA evidence, so there's not going to be much of any way to find the assailants. And the daughter doesn't really recover. Well, she does physically, but mentally she's shattered to the point that she won't talk and has to go to a sanatorium.

Paul tries to go on with his life, taking an assignment out in Arizona for the property developer Jainchill (Stuart Margolin). In addition to owning a whole bunch of land, Jainchill is interested in target shooting, and takes Paul out to a shooting range where the two find out that Paul is a pretty good shot, and seems to like it. So Jainchill gives Paul a gun, which is officially illegal in New York despite it being a massive violation of the Second Amendment.

One day, Paul himself gets caught up in the petty crime, and since he has his gun on him, he fights back by shooting the thugs. The police don't like this, of course, since homicide is a bit of a problem even if this one is a justifiable homicide. More than that, they don't like the fact that somebody is showing the cops up. So Detective Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) starts investigating the case, with little to go on -- until Paul starts becoming a more brazen vigilante and there are more killings.

The police are distressed, but the average people are cheering the mysterious vigilante on, being sick of an ineffective police force. Remember, this was the era of Serpico when it was becoming public knowledge just how corrupt the New York police were (and still are, but since 9/11 the amount of sucking up to the police has become almost unbearable). Eventually, something's bound to happen to make Paul's identity as the vigilante become public....

Charles Bronson wasn't the best actor out there by a long shot, but Death Wish is a movie that really plays well to his skill set as an actor. The movie also came out at a time, a few weeks before Richard Nixon's resignation, when there was a lot going wrong in America both nationally and in New York, and it's easy to see why the movie would capture the imagination of all those people who would like to think they could do something to stand up to all that was plaguing them.

Death With may not be an objectively great movie thanks to Bronson's limited range and what seemed to me to be some continuity issues, but the movie has an obvious appeal, both as a time capsule and a catharsis for anybody who's ever wanted revenge, which is probably most of us. Death Wish is available on DVD and Blu-ray, if you haven't seen it and wish to watch for yourself.