Sunday, July 10, 2022

Death Wish (dir, Michael Winner, 1974)


Charles Bronson plays a mild mannered architect, a conscientious objector during the Korean War who's really good at shooting people. He becomes a folk hero, a Sergeant York for the '70's. After his wife is murdered and his daughter raped, he starts killing muggers. The first couple of them were justifiable homicide, but then he starts murdering them as they try to run away. His daughter was catatonic and getting worse, but he was giddy after the first killings.

Less disturbing now than it was in its day. Movies are more violent and mass shootings and police murders are the problem, not subway vigilantes. 

Produced by Dino De Laurentiis. Not as cartoonish as the Israeli-made sequels from the '80's and '90's.

With Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia. Stuart Margolin. Christopher Guest as Patrolman Reilly. He played a cop in The Hot Rock, too. Must have been his thing back then.

Introducing Jeff Goldblum in the role of Freak #1. With Olympia Dukakis and The Munsters' Al Lewis uncredited as a security guard.

Ten years after this movie premiered, Bernard Goetz shot some delinquents on a New York subway. Experienced muggers said it was because they ran when they saw the gun---seasoned muggers would have taken it away from him. Goetz went to prison for eight months, poor devil, although he might have avoided that if he hadn't blathered to police without a lawyer.


 

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