American Movie Classics is marking the 35th anniversary of the release of Death Wish, the controversial and highly influential film featuring Charles Bronson as a liberal architect in New York City who becomes a vigilante after a group of thugs murder his wife and rape his daughter.
The film was highly successful with audiences, making Bronson a big star and inspiring several sequels. Critics hated it.
Both reactions were caused by the same thing: the film’s uncompromising truthfulness. Death Wish was the death of liberal illusions about crime and punishment, and both audiences and critics realized that.
Death Wish and its sequels refused to sugarcoat the villainy of the criminals the architect Paul Kersey pursues, nor did it state that he was justified in what he was doing. It simply showed the characters doing what they were inclined to do, making their choices and following the consequences. Such truth was impossible for Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, and other elitist critics of the time to stomach.
As direct and truthful as Death Wish is, it is not simplistic or political, despite the ravings of critics at the time. It is a story that was all too plausible, and the characterizations and situations were accurately and insightfully portrayed.
In the years since its release, Death Wish and its sequels have received some of the positive reconsideration they deserve—long after I wrote a lengthy article defending Death Wish, Dirty Harry, and other vigilante films in Chronicles magazine in the mid-1980s.
AMC will show the film several times in the coming days; click here for a synopsis and schedule, and click here to have AMC send you a reminder to watch it.
Death Wish: Highly recommended.
—S. T. Karnick
The first film is really good and REALLY political. Can’t rate it highly enough. It isn’t easy to do politics and entertainment, but Death Wish does it. Bronson is great. Superior ending, too.
Yes, very good observation, Fortunato. Also note that the police don’t find the culprits, either, reinforcing the film’s point that the crime problem has become utterly out of control and that the authorities have arrogantly and foolishly made themselves powerless to stop it.
It’s interesting to note that Kersey never catches the thugs responsible for the death of his wife and the raping of his daughter. Sounds not like an outright apologia for vigilantism to me. Maybe it was too hard for some critics to understand.