Death Wish

Directed by Michael Winner, Death Wish follows Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey as he becomes a celebrated vigilante after his wife and daughter are brutally attacked. Filmmaker Winner, armed with a screenplay by Wendell Mayes, delivers a slow-moving character study that grows more and more compelling as it unfolds, as the movie’s been saddled with a lackadaisical first half that emphasizes Kersey’s initial attempts at moving on from said attack – with this portion of the proceedings certainly benefiting quite substantially from Bronson’s commanding, sympathetic performance. It’s the presence of several stand-out sequences within the picture’s midsection, including a terrific scene wherein Kersey visits a gun club, that slowly-but-surely transforms Death Wish into an increasingly engrossing endeavor, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the central character’s encounters with his various victims are about as tense and thrilling as one might’ve hoped. (Kersey’s execution of subway-bound thugs is the picture’s high-water-mark, to be sure). The better-than-expected atmosphere is heightened by Winner’s decision to stress intriguing subplots (eg the cops pursuing Kersey, the rise of vigilantism due to Kersey’s actions, etc), while the memorable and downright iconic final shot ensures that the movie concludes on just about as positive a note as one could envision – with the end result a mostly satisfying piece of work that holds up surprisingly well all these years later.

*** out of ****