Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

ramsfan Though the theme had been tackled many times before, it can be argued that Death Wish is the father of all revenge films. Countless knockoffs, both good and bad, have been made since its release in 1974. Yet to characterize it solely as a revenge movie would be a disservice. It is a culturally significant movie which raises issues about the role of vigilantism in our society. Charles Bronson, who'd enjoyed previous success in feature films prior to Death Wish, became an anti-hero of sorts in a couple dozen movies throughout the next fifteen years after its release.Bronson plays Paul Kersey, an architect who lives in a New York City apartment. His world is shattered when his wife is beaten to death and his daughter is savagely raped by thugs posing as grocery deliverymen. After an unspecified mourning period and for cathartic effect, he is sent on a land developing assignment in New Mexico, where he meets client Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin). In contrast to Kersey's conscientious objector war beliefs, Jainchill embraces responsible gun use and winces at the "toilet" New York has become. He piques Kersey's interest at a gun range and a Wild West re-enactment show. Following completion of the project, Jainchill sees off Kersey at the airport and puts a gift in his luggage: a shiny new revolver.Kersey is accosted one night by a mugger and shoots him dead, after which he returns to his apartment and becomes physically sick. Ruminating on the death of his wife and his now-catatonic daughter, he sets himself up as a target for a variety of street scum throughout the city, killing them at various intervals and earning himself the tag of "vigilante killer" by the Press. Police Detective Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) is tasked with the dilemma of upholding the law in identifying the killer while facing the reality that his superiors and many New Yorkers are not all that upset at the city unconventionally being relieved of its criminals.Death Wish was extremely popular during a dreary period in the city's history when crime was rampant and presents the obvious ambiguity of vigilantism in a civilized society. The assault on Kersey's wife and daughter are brutally depicted, even by today's standards of viewing. It allows us to justify Kersey's actions towards a variety of unsavory characters. Disturbing to some, however, is the controversial way Kersey sets himself up as a target to draw out the criminals, a sense of entrapment if you will, in going from hunted to hunter.Not surprisingly, the financial success of Death Wish spawned several sequels, none of which were memorable. But the original packs a punch and tests our own beliefs about street justice. A very good film from the 70s which still holds relevance today. Highly recommended movie.

classicsoncall It seems the sequels to the original "Death Wish" appear with some regularity on cable channels in my area, so I've been catching them out of order every now and then. However it occurred to me I never reviewed the picture that started it all, having seen it when it first came out and not again till the other day.Given the circumstances of how Paul Kersey's wife was murdered and his daughter left a catatonic invalid, the response we get in this story is almost mild by comparison to the over the top violence we see in movies today, including the sequels spawned by this film which started up eight years later. I don't know if this was the revenge film that initiated the genre, though it has a pretty good claim to the title.It's interesting to note the advance in technology from the mid-Seventies to today by way of that scene where Frank Ochoa's (Vincent Gardenia) partner ran around looking for an available phone booth to call Kersey's apartment and got frustrated to find one where the line had been cut. I'm curious how younger viewers of today process that scene, when even a kid can make a call on a cell phone. How primitive the Seventies must have been. In case you didn't keep count, Paul Kersey gunned down a total of ten muggers in the picture, missing one and getting shot himself on his final outing. By then it wasn't a surprise that Ochoa would offer him a way out of the headlines if he accepted a deal to get out of town. However there was an element of closure lacking regarding the three hoods who opened the picture with the attack on Kersey's family; he never ran across them to get the vengeance he was seeking. Speaking of which, and I know all actors have to get their start somewhere, but what a way for a young actor like Jeff Goldblum to catch a break by landing a role in his very first picture as a slimy street thug.

Leofwine_draca Michael Winner's gritty slice of vigilante cinema has finally been released here after twenty-five years of unavailability. Like most films of the period that were "banned" as such, seen today this is relatively tame viewing material which has had its effect lessened by what has come since. Nonetheless, Winner's film is still pretty good viewing, a movie that actually has something to say about modern society and man's place in it. It's a film that gave me food for thought, in any case. Unlike the later THE EXTERMINATOR and even DEATH WISH II, this is a film that tones down the sensationalism to concentrate on the morals behind the story.Firstly, the movie is not as unpleasant as I had imagined. The build-up to the actual attack on the wife and daughter is worse than the event itself, and thankfully Winner skims over the gory details (or maybe they've just been cut out). Bronson's subsequent vigilante crimes on the dark streets of New York are staged well, with crisp photography giving the film a realistic, gritty edge to it. They're also invariably exciting, and without any unnecessary stylish trimmings; Bronson shoots people with an aim to kill, and that's it. There are no over-the-top gun battles a la John Woo; here it's straightforward cold-blooded murder, shot in a matter-of-fact way.Bronson here is actually very good as the grieving husband and father who takes justice in the only way he knows how; the script gives him unusual characterisation which makes you feel for him. For instance, he doesn't just go out and start killing people; it's a gradual process, and scenes of Bronson being physically sick after shooting a man in the stomach remind us that he is human after all. The supporting cast are uniformly great, and watch out for a very young-looking Jeff Goldblum in his first film role as a thug.So, not only is this a very slick thriller, it's also a film with important things to say. Winner is definitely behind Bronson in his actions, and shows the police as the manipulated buffoons that they really are, although he is sure to show both sides of the coin. No doubt the viewer will find himself siding with Bronson over his actions also. An essential slice of the hard-edged world of the '70s, this movie would have been unthinkable back in the peace-loving '60s.

Gatorman9 Watching this movie again more than 40 years after it first came out is interesting. While it can still touch a nerve somewhere deep down inside, on the surface at least, it seems heavily clichéd to the point of being cloying. It seems heavy-handed and in terms of its style very heavily dated. I do not think it has stood up all that well to the test of time. Anybody who saw this as an adolescent in the 70's should have enough life experience by now to know it is almost as much of a fantasy as Star Wars. Even where crimes of the nature seen at the beginning of this movie do occur, in real life they don't look, or more importantly, feel the way they are depicted here. It would be interesting to see a thoughtful modern-day remake, but it is unlikely anybody will do a thoughtful one. Instead, you only get even more fantastic, exploitative renditions, in the light of which, it is no wonder America has become a filled with foolish, immature, paranoid gun-crazies that can't go to the bathroom anymore without slinging an assault rifle. As Roger Ebert once said while discussing film noir, "no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic." Hell, maybe the answer to this movie in 2015 is a movie about a "vigilante" who shoots gun-crazies to prove how ridiculous they are. Under these circumstances, I give this one a mere six.