Film Review: Death Wish Last update: 9th August 2000

I like this film - it's not overly gritty and plays out smoothly. The acting is good and the picture quality is what you'd expect from a 70's production. The only thing I hate about it is the must - it's terrible! It sounds like it was done on a Hammond Organ!

Other than the dire music, it's a very enjoyable film. Beginning, as all these films seem to, with a perfectly normal man - maybe a little too nice and too good at his job but otherwise normal - then moving swiftly to the point in his life where everything changes. His wife dies and his daughter becomes a mental patient because of the acts of a group of muggers. The main character (I forget his name but he's played by Charles Bronson) under the pressure from this and begins to stalk the streets at night, seeking out muggers and killing them with a gun that's given to him as a present from a friend when he joins a gun club.

The media dubs him The Vigilante and he causes a significant drop in the number of muggings that occur in New York. The police are chasing him but when the mayor realises the crime figures are falling because of him he calls in the investigating officer and tells him to scare off the Vigilante so he will stop killing muggers but the media will report that he's still at large; thereby keeping down the crime figures (they hope) and removing the need for further investigation on this case.

I liked the way the Vigilante is, at first anyway, repulsed by killing - we see him rush home after his first shooting and come close to being physically sick at the thought of what he's done. He's still human, just pushed beyond his limits.

At the end we see that although he's cooperating with the police by leaving New York, he's not going to stop - he's not through making the muggers pay for what happened to his wife and daughter. It's not made clear whether he knows if he's found the ones that killed his wife or not, but the audience knows; which makes me think this film was left open for a sequel.

Overall it's an enjoyable film. The music can make you want to scream at your TV while watching it but apart from that it's great.