Rating: 
Summary: Wish I were dead.... naw.
Review: Let me say right off the bat that this movie desperately needs to be re-scored. The music consists of fluit solo's and 70's porno music. Ugh! There are a few other elements which render this movie dated as well (i.e. dress and hair doo's) but for the most part it is still a relatively entertaining little movie. Possibly worth being remade at some point by a Tarantino or Roger Avery type figure. In anycase, its dated, but fun nevertheless. Reccomended to fans of movies like "Payback" and "The Outlaw Josey Whales" and any other movie where you end up rooting for the bad guy.
Rating: 
Summary: Death Wish is a classic.
Review: Death Wish is certainly one of Bronson's best. It had to be. They wouldn't have made four sequels if it wasn't and it didn't have potential to continue the story.
Paul Kersey, played by Bronson, is an architect with a wife and daughter. After he and his wife get back from a vacation, his wife is murdered and his daughter sexually assaulted. The street punks,( one of them played by Jeff Goldblum )that committed the crimes are never caught.Bronson is of course devastated and is concerned for his daughter who has not recovered from the ordeal and now does not speak, at least most of the time.
Kersey meets a man whilst doing business and he gives him a gun.Kersey turns into a vigilante and goes around New York shooting street punks. What a loss.Not. Unfortunately the police through a process of elimination are onto him and at the end tell him to leave town. But as we know,Bronson doesn't stop there.Can't say I blame him.
Rating: 
Summary: What's not to like?
Review: This film is important for what I believe is the same reason that it seems to irk liberals ' it demonstrates that any person, no matter what their politics or what they might say or feel, can be completely changed by an event that affects them personally. (Picture Michael Dukakis in the 1988 debates with George Bush insisting he would not seek the death penalty if his wife were murdered. He may have 'believed' this'.yet he wasn't 'believable'). This, to me, is the more powerful idea in 'Death Wish', not the ethical question concerning vigilantism itself.Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is a liberal New York architect who's life changes after his wife and daughter-in-law are beaten by thugs in their apartment. Kersey's wife dies from her injuries and his daughter-in-law suffers severe psychological trauma. We first really learn of Kersey's liberal leanings on his 'rehabilitation' assignment in Arizona: His father died in a hunting accident (guns are just accidents waiting to happen, don't you know!) and he was a Conscientious Objector during the Korean war. But the initial tragedy, coupled by Kersey's exposure to another, more 'independent' way of life out west, slowly begins to change him. Once Kersey arrives back in the cesspool of New York and opens Stuart Margolin's (the Arizona land developer) 'gift' (a .32 caliber revolver), his fate is sealed. Yet even then, his 'conversion' is not immediate. After shooting his first attacker, Bronson dashes home to vomit in the toilet, still being repulsed by what has just happened. Once Bronson's path is set, he really begins to contrast with his son, who seems a symbol of the generic, helpless victim. Bronson may not be the best actor but his stone-like demeanor suits the role and he does a more than adequate job. In fact, the acting as a whole has a certain 'sparseness' about it, but that may be one of the elements that makes the film work. Some reviewers have been critical of the 'datedness' of the movie ' well, after all it was made in 1974. If it's 'dated', it's that, by today's standards, the violence is somewhat tame, and that's a plus in my book. If the movie has any drawbacks, it may be the cat-and-mouse game Kersey plays with the police chief (Vincent Gardenia), which ultimately begins to detract from the movie's central theme. This is not 'landmark' film, but it is a good one worthy of many viewings, whether they be fun, cathartic or introspective. Herbie Hancock's score is an added plus.
Rating:
Summary: Missed Concept
Review: Death Wish was a great book that challenged people to think about crime and vengeance, and put vigilantism under a powerful microscope. At times, you are on Paul's side, especially at first, when you've experienced with him the horror and violence that befell his family. We walk through the utter darkness of his mind, as he decides to do the unthinkable, and become a one-man army and take the law into his own hands. Unfortunately, much (if not all) of the underlying subplot of the novel is glossed over for the movie. Sure, we see Bronson have occasional doubts, and he vomits after his first kill, but the strain on his conscience was not handled very well in the movie. In the movie, you don't get much of an idea that he may not really be doing the right thing. The novel was provocative and didn't offer up any concrete answers, and at the end of the book, when he transfers to another city, he leaves his vigilance behind him, having come to the conclusion that becoming a criminal yourself is not an answer to the crime problem. That thee is a fine line between self defense and going out looking for trouble. But in the film, Bronson hadn't quite gotten it all out of his system, and we're left with an understanding that he's going to do it again, which basically tells us that taking the law into your own hands is justifiable, at all costs. Also, it set the stage for a series of sequels that were so ludicrous, they make they Rambo sequels feel like quality cinema. Paul Kersey is no longer an embittered, struggling, law-abiding man who has been pushed to the limits of his conscience and morality, and instead has been turned into a role model for the armchair vigilantes, so they can play out their violent fantasies vicariously though the films' main character. I liked the first movie very much, but was put off by the change in ending, and the bullets-flying, no-brainer franchise of sequels it spawned. Read the book, and see what the author was really intending.
Rating:
Summary: Where Are The Rest?!!
Review: This is a great escapist revenge film for anyone who's seen the evening news and been disgusted with the bleeding heart "solutions" to crime & punishment. One question though, where are the DVD versions of Deathwish 2-4?
Rating:
Summary: Paul Kersey As Modern Everyman
Review: Crime in the streets and the police reaction to it is always not far from front page news. Occasionally, Hollywood thinks that it has a tap on the pulse of urban America, and in 1974, that tap was DEATH WISH. The popular perception then was that the streets of every large urban city was a battleground where the only ones armed were the bad guys. Crime rates were up, and the liberal approach to reducing that crime was down. Director Michael Winner constructed a tale that was more fairy tale than cinema veritee. In this movie, Charles Bronson plays architect Paul Kersey, who is your basic liberal good guy, educated, kindly, affluent, having a loving family. Whenever any director shows a family man in happiness, you know that you are being set up for the flip side of one of Grimm's most somber of fairy tales. His wife is killed and his daughter gang-raped by a bunch of greasy hoods, one of whom is Jeff Goldblum, before he became a good guy himself. This attack scene is a graphic one, designed to make the liberal urban dweller shake in a way that would not be duplicated until the equally nauseating I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. Kersey reacts with the way that conservatives truly believe that any liberal would have reacted, grief followed by a desire for revenge. Kersey is meant to be seen as the very definition of a conservative: a liberal who has not been mugged. Well, in this movie, Kersey has the equivalent. His family is torn apart, so he spends the rest of the film, first attracting muggers with his apparent helplessness, then blowing them away with a handgun. With each mugger he eliminates, the audience is manipulated in cheering him and damning them. The muggers are easy to spot in that nearly all are minorities and wear the required muggers outfits: sweat band, dirty shirt, and leather jacket. He keeps killing them until the police, symbolized by Vincent Gardenia, find out that he is the vigilante and gives him the Wild West order: get out of town by sundown. Kersey does only to continue his vigilante ways in yet another urban city.
DEATH WISH bears no more relation to the reality that was New York in 1973 then Bill Clinton to moral rectitude in 1996. What Micheal Winner wanted was a movie to appeal to the basest instincts of those who are caricatured in the film as total buffoons. Do you remember the scene in which a hard hat smilingly describes how he and his fellow hardhats beat the bejesus out of a greasy looking mugger? That moronically smug look on his face is the visual equivalent of the kind of urban dweller that Michael Winner hoped would buy enough tickets to make him a rich man. He succeeded. Calm rationality lost.
Rating:
Summary: Blowin Away Creeps
Review: This movie is an American Classic, with all the green screens and digital effects going on now a days in movies we have forgoten our roots. I am only 20 so I Grew up with these types of movies with my Father, Buy this movie and share it with the family. J/k. This is a great movie because it is about a man that is pushed too far, and now he fighting back. Maybe not by the book but it gets the job done. You can have Jar Jar Binks being an idiot or you can watch Charles Bronson Blowin Away Creeps.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie. Could have been great.
Review: This movie could have been a lot better if it had a more competant director. Today it looks dated in places, and some of the dialogue delivery approaches camp at times (again, blame Mr Winner). Plot: after his wife and daughter are attacked by muggers (one being Jeff Goldblum)and Bronsons wife is stomped to death and his daughter raped and obscenely "tagged" with a can of spray paint, architect & Korean war conscientious objector Bronson acquires a gun on a business trip to Arizona and returns home to New York to embark on a one man vigilante rampage blasting street scum into oblivion. Bronson and Vincent Gardenia both give good perfomances, and the rape scene still has the power to jolt you out of your seat, but every time I see DEATH WISH I keep thinking of how it could be updated and remade... better. Still the fun of the series is to cheer Bronson on whenever he wastes some scumbag. This was the precursor to such revenge flicks as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and MS .45.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out, sleeze balls, Bronson's coming to get you!
Review: Liberals hate it.... Bronson takes out the bad guys.... two reasons to love this movie. The typical lib line is that the criminal is the victim, and the victim is the criminal; that's why when the criminal get theirs from Mr. B. you'll hear from the libs how terrible the message of this flick is. They'll tell you "But they have rights".... what about the rights of their victims-- you won't hear the libs worry about that. If you like to see the criminals and thugs get what's due to them, check this one out. Bronson played a soft liberal at the beginning of the story, but saw his family ruined by murder and rape. When the police couldn't find the perps, he went hunting.... and brought back a rack of trophies. A classic flick.
Rating:
Summary: Justice?..Or Vigilante
Review: I'll take the vigilante, unfortunately the law cannot protect everyone and it is impotent and lenient in punishing criminals.
(In this country anyway) Ok nuff of that. Charles Bronson plays Architect Paul Kersey who wife and daughter are attacked by thugs on their way home from shopping.
Kersey gets the bad news about his wife's death and his daughter's irreversible catatonia. Steven Keats plays the "what am I gonna do now" husband of Kersey's daughter.
Charles Bronson's character knows what to do...seek vengeance.
His company sends him to Arizona to look over a project where he meets the land developer (Stuart Margolin) who's a shooter (targets) in the gun club where he's a member
When it comes time for Paul to leave and go back to NY he gets a
present, in the shape of a .32 revolver.
Kersey then decides to begin the vigilantism, after which killing his first thug he goes home and pukes his guts out.
Now it begins..all downhill and no hesitation to kill for Mr.Kersey. He soon becomes a celebrity not only with the public
but with the "NY government" who will not admit that the vigilante's killing spree has cut crime by 67% (I think the film says). Now he comes under the watchful eye of NY (sneezy) detective (Vincent Guardinia) who is caught between doing his job and at the same time being sympathetic to Kersey.
Now...ask yourself this question, what would you do if this happened to you? I already know what I would do.
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