Death Wish (

1974

) ½

When looking at statistics for violent crime in America in the 20th century, sometimes I just have to slap my head an ask, what the hell happened?! America was a country that went from hardly any violent crime in the 1950s and early 1960s, to having a veritable epidemic of rapes, robberies, and murders in pretty much every city. Sure, part of this can be explained away by simple economics, the 1950s were boom times and consequently, there were fewer people desperate enough to gravitate towards the criminal underclass. It was also a time when people were having a lot of kids, by the late 60s early 70s those kids were big enough to cause some serious trouble. Yet such simple explanations cannot hand-wave away such a titanic shift. Naturally, every academic and political commentator has a theory as to why violent crime skyrocketed the way it did. This is a film review site, not a scientific journal, so don't look to this review as a means of settling the age-old debate. Sure, I could rule out some obvious red herrings, like the notion that the increase of violence was caused by over-exposure to violent TV. But, I honestly couldn't tell you if the rising crime rates were due to young people feeling alienated from society as a result of the Vietnam War, or the explosive popularity of heroin, or the widespread use of leaded gasoline. My background is in ancient history, and I honestly haven't read enough about the period to comment intelligently on the topic (maybe in a couple of years I'll update this review). For our purposes here, it suffices to say that in 1974, when Death Wish was released, violent crime in American cities was skyrocketing and showed no signs of slowing down, let alone stopping.

For most of the 1960s, and into the early 1970s American films had shied away from addressing this fact head-on. The bad guys were at the head of vast international conspiracies like in Bullitt (1968) or the focus was mostly on the procedural investigation as was the case with the Boston Strangler (1968). This makes sense, as for most people movies are escapism. They don't go to the theater to be confronted by all the horrors and worries that kept them up at night. However, this is true only up to a certain point. Eventually, the problem becomes so bad that the audience finds itself more than happy to fantasize about a solution to it, even if that solution is completely absurd and unworkable in real life. By 1971, American audiences were psychologically prepared to cheer as Dirty Harry (1971) blew a gaping hole in the chest of the ersatz Zodiac killer. Sure, the film did nothing to actually address any real issues surrounding violent crime, but it felt good to imagine for an hour or two that such problems could be solved. However, Dirty Harry was a difficult hero for audiences to project themselves into, after all, he was a cop. Sure, he bent (and eventually broke) the rules he was supposed to follow, but on the most basic level, his job was to shoot bad guys. Other vigilante movies from the early 70s, like Straw Dogs (1971) and The Last House on the Left (1972) were too grotesque (and in the case of the former, too artsy) to resonate with mass audiences though they certainly found their niche. Death Wish, with its average everyday protagonist, turned vigilante killer after being pushed too far, would provide them with just the figure they needed. For many, it was disturbingly easy to sympathize with, and even lionize Paul Kersey.

We live in a very different America today, one where Times Square is a heavily policed corporate Disney World, instead of a stretch of urban decay fueled by drug/sex traffic. It is important then, that we put ourselves in the shoes of that first run audience to fully appreciate the impact of Death Wish. These were people who were afraid to ride the subway at night, lest they become victims of a crime; afraid to set foot in a darkened city park, lest they never leave it. These were men and women, who had spent the whole walk to the movie theater carefully watching the crowds of strangers for fear that they would become another statistic. Make no mistake either, their fears were real and justified. This was no Nixonite propaganda to turn the silent majority against the rest of the country but rather a natural response to the situation. Violent crime in the 1970s was a tangible thing, and few city dwellers could claim to be totally unaffected by it. The film simply won't make sense without this sinking fear. Unlike its predecessor, Dirty Harry (1971), Death Wish does not have brilliant direction or an iconic star, to make it a transcendental work for the ages. Those that have never been made to feel like they powerless to defend themselves or their loved ones from a lawless foe, will not get the full impact of Death Wish. We can only imagine what this film feels like, and the catharsis it must offer to those less fortunate.

The film opens with Paul Kersey and his wife Joanna returning from a vacation in Hawaii to their home in Manhattan, New York (referred to in the film as “the war zone” and “the toilet” both aliases are completely justifiable). In short order, a gang of thugs (a very young Jeff Goldblum among them, who is apparently more interesting in vandalism than the more serious crimes his gang commits) breaks into Kersey's apartment while he's at work, kills Joanna and rapes his adult daughter Carol. Despite the subject matter, the scene is remarkably restrained; not that it makes it any easier to watch. I find that as I get older, the grotesque scenes that once left me mercifully numb impact with greater ferocity. So much for the notion that I was desensitizing myself to violent and cruelty. I suspect the reason has nothing to do with the violence on screen, but instead with the mounting responsibilities of adult life. I have more to lose now than when I was 18, and the idea of having it taken from me by lawless scum is consequently all the more unbearable.

Kersey's son-in-law Jack (who weirdly enough always calls Kersey “dad” rather than the more natural Paul or the more formal Mr. Kersey) is at a loss for how to handle the situation. He blindly follows the advice of psychiatrists and medicates Carol to the point that she's virtually catatonic. A relaxing trip to the countryside doesn't help her condition, and eventually, the poor woman has to be institutionalized. The NYPD is on the case, but with Joanna dead, and Carol unresponsive they have no witness and no chance of catching the criminals that did this. In the midst of all this, Paul decides that he needs a vacation of his own and agrees to a business trip to Arizona, where he oversees a new real estate development that his firm is sponsoring. The trip proves to be a revelation for Kersey, who gets introduces to the old west style gun-culture, and the good old American tradition of self-defense. While initially reluctant to the idea, he quickly comes around and cheerfully announces that he won't cut and run again.

Self-defense is admirable, but it soon becomes obvious that Kersey isn't interested in just deterring criminals. In short order he crosses the line and starts looking for trouble, by taking midnight strolls through the park, riding the subway in dangerous neighborhoods while loaded down with groceries and wandering the mean streets all while packing heat. Whenever a mugger jumps him, Kersey shoots him dead and leaves the body as a warning to his peers. In short order the newspapers take notice and stories begin to circulate about the New York vigilante on a one-man mission to clean up the streets. Kersey, far from being worried, reveals in the media attention and seems the happiest he's been since his wife and daughter were taken from him. However, you can only go around blasting criminals for so long in the biggest city on earth before the police take notice, and crucially the cops of Death Wish are neither corrupt nor incompetent (unlike say, the real NYPD of the 1970s). Before long the noose is tightening around Kersey, though there are many in government and law enforcement who look on the vigilante with no small amount of favor and would prefer he disappear rather than serve time in jail.

Let's get one thing straight, contrary to what the AV club insinuates, Death Wish is not a racist film. Vadim Rizov suggests that Kersey overwhelmingly targets blacks and other minorities but that just is not the case. Most of the criminals Kersey kills are white (as are, crucially, the scummiest scum bags we see on screen, the guys that killed Joanna and raped Carol). If he wants to complain about equal representation, Rizov should ask why all Kersey's victims are men, and why none of them are visibly gay or trans; after all, we all know representation matters. All joking aside, Kersey's method of selecting his targets cannot be said to be racially motivated, as he just wanders around in vulnerable situations waiting to be attacked.

That's not to say that Kersey is unambiguously portrayed as a hero, far from it in fact. Unlike the great majority of rape-revenge movies, Death Wish never has its protagonist hunt down the men responsible for the initial crime. The three goons that kill Joanna and rape Carol vanish from the film after their scene is over. Rather than hunt them down, Kersey decides that his mission in life is to see that nobody is victimized the same way his family was. This is at once a more noble mission and one that is harder for the audience to understand or sympathize with. Avenging your wife and daughter, that's a mission that we can all get behind; blasting random muggers on the subway not so much. The film doesn't treat Kersey as an outright hero or an irredeemable villain, instead, he's just sort of left hanging out there, giving the audience a chance to make up their own minds about him and his actions. His methods are so clumsy, that it's impossible to simply watch him and call him a badass, like say Dirty Harry (1971) or Cobra (1986). Indeed, Kersey reminds me of nothing so much the great Western anti-hero Ethan Edwards from The Searchers (1956). Like Edwards, Kersey a man driven by such a vicious thirst for vengeance that it borders of psychotic. Both men are alienating for audience members expecting a simple, moralistic figure that they can either detest or idolize. In The Searchers (1956), such men were vital to establishing civilization in the wild west but were nonetheless excluded from taking part in that civilization once it was constructed (see the gorgeous final shot where the rest of the cast enters the home, but Ethan lingers at the doorway). Death Wish seems to posit that we were too quick to cast men like Edwards out and that now 100 years removed from the wild west, civilization is showing that it needs them back.

Lifelong bleeding hearts, like Kersey at the start of the film, will probably object to the character's complete change of personality from peacenik to vigilante. It smacks of the old adage that “A liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet.” While that may be a touch simplistic, Kersey's transformation makes a good deal of sense. I'm sure I'd have less patience for liberal pieties about misunderstood criminals were I still grieving over the loss of my wife and the rape of my daughter. It's easy to profess liberal ideals when you're safe and secure, some people can continue to stick to their ideals even under adversity. Good for them, but not everyone can be held to such lofty standards. Moreover, focusing on this point can make us miss a perfectly legitimate criticism of Kersey's portrayal. Namely, that there's no way in hell anyone is going to accept Charles Bronson, a guy who spent the majority of his adult life playing tough guys in Westerns and action movies, as a pacifist wimp. Hell, even Bronson admitted as much in a later interview saying that he was obviously miscast and that the role really should have gone to someone like Dustin Hoffman (after Straw Dogs (1971) nobody could plausibly doubt that Hoffman didn't have a performance like that in him). Bronson's presence in the film undermines the whole story of a regular man pushed too far and gives the movie the unwelcome and unnatural appearance of an action movie. This may serve Death Wish's innumerable sequels better, but here it gets in the way of the film's ambiguity.