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Death Wish (1974)
Dir. Michael Winner
Minor spoilers below.
Oh baby, what a disappointment. This is a mess. Maybe it's because I was led to believe that this was going to be some kind of masterpiece or that it set the template for a lot of modern revenge movies. But even watching this with forgiving eyes, I see nothing but flaws. I'm not sure this is even B-movie level.
The first twenty minutes actually trick you into thinking that the rest of the film is going to be decent, or at the very least coherent. Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is a down-to-earth, bleeding heart liberal architect who gets a phone call one day informing him that his wife and daughter had been raped and assaulted by a group of thugs. There it is. Now Paul will go on a rampage ending in killing the pieces of trash that killed his wife. Right?
What follows is a confusing, meandering, nonsensical string of events so willingly stupid and free of logic that it makes me question the sanity of anyone who can honestly say they enjoy the flick and have watched it multiple times. Doing my best not to completely spoil anything, what the hell was going on in this?
Eventually, the core reason Kersey becomes an assassin of sorts just gets completely dropped. The action scenes are just in fact the same scene over and over again in different locations. There are a litany of scenes with no meaning and no conflict. No resolution. No satisfaction. Seemingly every criminal in the city comes equipped with only a knife while our protagonist appears to be a God considering he's the only one with an access to firearms.
You can only hear "give me the money" so many times before you stop thinking about the movie and just dial in on Bronson's 'stache.
FINAL VERDICT: Trash heap. Don't watch it.
Dir. Michael Winner
Minor spoilers below.
Oh baby, what a disappointment. This is a mess. Maybe it's because I was led to believe that this was going to be some kind of masterpiece or that it set the template for a lot of modern revenge movies. But even watching this with forgiving eyes, I see nothing but flaws. I'm not sure this is even B-movie level.
The first twenty minutes actually trick you into thinking that the rest of the film is going to be decent, or at the very least coherent. Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is a down-to-earth, bleeding heart liberal architect who gets a phone call one day informing him that his wife and daughter had been raped and assaulted by a group of thugs. There it is. Now Paul will go on a rampage ending in killing the pieces of trash that killed his wife. Right?
What follows is a confusing, meandering, nonsensical string of events so willingly stupid and free of logic that it makes me question the sanity of anyone who can honestly say they enjoy the flick and have watched it multiple times. Doing my best not to completely spoil anything, what the hell was going on in this?
Eventually, the core reason Kersey becomes an assassin of sorts just gets completely dropped. The action scenes are just in fact the same scene over and over again in different locations. There are a litany of scenes with no meaning and no conflict. No resolution. No satisfaction. Seemingly every criminal in the city comes equipped with only a knife while our protagonist appears to be a God considering he's the only one with an access to firearms.
You can only hear "give me the money" so many times before you stop thinking about the movie and just dial in on Bronson's 'stache.
FINAL VERDICT: Trash heap. Don't watch it.