There is a lot to say about Death Wish (1974), and little of it is positive.  It has, to my knowledge, one of the most graphic depictions of rape in cinematic history.  I am mentioning this early in this review just to get it out of the way because the less said about it, the better.  Because of this event, as you shall see, you can understand to a certain degree why our protagonist, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), reacts as he does.  I will provide further context in a moment.  For now, the background I will provide is when I first saw this film, which was in graduate school.  It was presented to us as a mirror to the decaying urban environment of the 1970s.  As such, if you have the misfortune of watching it, you will find a motion picture that is trying to combine elements of action, drama, art, and social commentary.  I suppose the right word for this would be realism, though I am not sure reality is this weird.  One clue of the strangeness to come is found in the opening credits when the music is credited to Herbie Hancock.  Arguably, his most famous song, “Rockit,” has a music video that gave me nightmares as a child.  If you are familiar with it, and got the gist of my description of Death Wish to this point, you will agree that this makes sense, while also being odd.

The odd nature of Death Wish begins with Paul and his wife, Joanna Kersey (Hope Lange), vacationing in Hawaii.  It is all pleasant and fitting of paradise, and completely out of phase with its title.  Then again, things come back more in line such a theme when they return to their upper-middle class home in New York City.  Their socio-economic status is not the way this relates, but rather the cold, crazed setting in which the rest of the events takes place.  Paul goes to his job as an architect, while Joanna and their married daughter, Carol Kersey-Toby (Kathleen Tolan), go to the grocery store.  You might be puzzled by the fact that they ask for their goods to be delivered, but this was common practice in those days.  What it does is give a trio of hoodlums, one of which is played by a young Jeff Goldblum in his first role, the address of the clearly more well-off Kersey family.  Posing as those making delivery, the criminals gain access to the apartment, murder Joanna, and rape Carol.  Paul learns of this after getting a call from his son-in-law, Jack Toby (Steven Keats). Jack and Paul immediately go to the hospital where Carol is being treated, and this is where they learn that Joanna has passed away from her injuries.  Paul is pretty stoic in the face of these developments, including when he goes to the police to get an update on the investigation into the attack on his family.  He also returns to his home after Joanna’s funeral, and to work shortly on the heels of this move.  His co-workers, including his boss, are unsure that staying in New York is best for Paul.  Thus, he is sent to Tucson, Arizona, in order to help develop a property for which his firm had been hired to design.  Following making Jack promise to keep him up-to-date on Carol’s progress, Paul heads for the American Southwest.  There proceeds an interlude here where we see Paul perform variety of tasks related to his profession.  We have already witnessed him hit a potential mugger in the face with a sock full of quarters, thus leading the viewer to think this is the beginning of his revenge quest.  But, no, here is fifteen minutes of him doing mundane community planning tasks.  Still, his trip puts him into contact with the man who hired his company, Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin).  He is a cowboy hat wearing throwback, but my does he love his hills.  More importantly, he introduces guns to Paul.  More accurately, he re-introduces the Korean War veteran, though conscientious objector (yet served as a paramedic), to fire arms.  When Paul had been a boy, his dad was a hunter, but died in an accident, leading to his mother bringing him up to not like these kinds of weapons.  Yet, pulling the trigger on the pistol Paul is given to practice with ignites his imagination, and shows off his aim.  Thus, Ames gives Paul a gun as a going away gift for the architect’s help, handing it to Paul as he is dropped off at the airport.  Yes, he flies with a fire arm from Tucson to New York.  Again, things were different at that time.  Now, Paul is back in New York City with a gun and a new attitude as to what to do about the rampant crime in his town, that attitude being inspired by the gunslingers of the Wild West.  Thus, he purposely starts walking the streets at night armed and waiting for would-be muggers to accost him.  This happens on the first night, and though he is horrified by shooting the man, he quickly gets over it.  The authorities, though, are less inclined to let this act slide.  Inspector Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) is assigned to the case.  He quickly deduces that the perpetrator of the thwarted mugging is somebody who had recently lost a loved one, and thus has a reason to be killing these low-level criminals.  Having a military record is also part of the dossier he composes.  In other words, somebody resembling Paul.  From here, there is a sequence of killings as Paul’s spree begins to garner international attention, and Inspector Ochoa gets closer to discovering Paul’s identity.  Inspector Ochoa is on the brink of cracking the case when he is called into the police commissioner’s office.  Because of the decline in petty crime brought on by Paul’s vigilantism, Inspector Ochoa is ordered to not make any arrests.  The only thing that brings it to a close is Paul getting wounded during one of his patrols, if you will, and having his gun found by the police.  Inspector Ochoa is able to match Paul with the person they have been zeroing in on, and tells Paul that he must leave the city.  Thus, Paul’s firm gets him a transfer to Chicago, and it is his arrival in the Windy City that our story concludes.

If you ever have the misfortune of living through your wife being murdered and daughter raped, you too might have a Death Wish for those responsible for such an act.  Christianity teaches otherwise, and it goes beyond merely turning the other cheek.  However, before I get into my Catholic analysis in earnest, we should take note of the people running the facility in which a catatonic Carol is put in order to care for her mental state.  If you have read many of my reviews, you can probably guess that it is nuns providing a loving environment for a person in need of healing following significant trauma.  There is only one Person capable of bearing the burdens associated with such devastating wounds, and that is Jesus.  He took the sins of the assaulters, and the pain of the victims, with Him to His Crucifixion, and he did it out of love.  This might seem like a simple concept, and one on which I have touched many times in my reviews.  All the same, it forms the core of what His Church has been called to do throughout the centuries, and it is why you see the sisters at Carol’s elbow, gently doing for her what she is incapable of at the moment.  And that is okay as well.  Nuns have been doing the kind of work most of society has decided not to do for centuries, along with their brother monks.  As such, seeing their presence in a few scenes is welcome in what is otherwise a dreary, and repetitive, tale of vengeance.  Having said this, I would challenge Paul to emulate female and male religious in how he approaches society rather than taking up a gun and purposely going to look for trouble.  I get that compassion is hard to experience when one hurts like I suppose Paul does.  I put that modifier in there simply to further describe his robotic responses, and stoicism.  Anyone, hopefully, would be an emotional wreck if they went through what he does.  The setting in which he lives does not help.  At the same time, we are called to be in the world, but not of the world.  Showing mercy is emulating God, and doing so more effectively than determining who lives and dies based on their criminal record.  Nobody is too far gone for redemption.

If you think Death Wish is a one off, you would be mistaken.  This one is the first of five films, and they even attempted a reboot in 2018 starring Bruce Willis.  I am not sure what the others are like, but this one is an odd duck.  I am not sure it could even be explained by the times it portrays.  All this should be an indication that this is not worth watching.