Death Wish (1974)
Directed by Michael Winner
After his wife is murdered by street punks, a pacifistic New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad, prowling the streets for would-be muggers after dark.
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What critics compared Death Wish to
Bronson is all the more troubling for being based on the true story of a violent lifer named Michael Gordon Peterson, who took the name "Charlie Bronson" in honour of actor Charles Bronson and his vengeful Death Wish character.
Peterson, who adopted for himself the name "Charles Bronson" in honor of that actor and his iconic turn in Death Wish , is called "Britain's most famous prisoner" in a title card at the end of the movie, and one gets the clear sense from the evidence onscreen that this is as agreeable a fate as he could have possibly chosen for himself; it seems indeed that the only motivation he has in life is to be infamous, whether it is among inmates, prison guards, or the population at large.
When he was let out for 68 days in 1988, boxing promoter Paul Daniels (Matt King, "RocknRolla") tried to trade in on his notoriety and renamed him for the tough guy Hollywood star of the "Death Wish" movies.
At an early age, after seeing " Death Wish ," young Michael took the name of Charles Bronson .
Tom Hardy gives an amazing performance as Peterson, who took on the nickname Charlie Bronson, after the "Death Wish" actor.
‘Bronson’’ bills itself as the story of Britain’s most notorious living prisoner, Michael Peterson, who early on in his 35 years in jail - 30 of them in solitary confinement - gave himself the “fighting name’’ of Charles Bronson, after the Hollywood star of “Death Wish.’’
Mandy is a hypnotic and thrilling freak-out that has us in its thrall from the opening credits, even when the director becomes a little too indulgent, if that’s possible in a psychedelic concoction that blends Heavy Metal magazine, Mad Max, Hellraiser, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Death Wish and The Evil Dead, pours it into a goblet and has Ken Russell present it to you with a Laudanum chaser.
Mandy (Grade: B) is a midnight-movie festival onto itself; over two gonzo hours, it combines giallo, Clive Barker, Death Wish , prog rock, heavy metal, Heavy Metal, Guy Maddin, Mad Max, the dueling-chainsaw climax of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Nicolas Roeg, and Nicolas Cage at his most bugging-out unhinged.
All too often, films like Death Wish and its ilk indulge our fear and our hatred — our deep, visceral, nihilistic need to destroy things.
Although there were plenty of reasons to hate the film—the clumsy and contrived nature of the screenplay, the shoddy and haphazard quality of the filmmaking and the utter waste of the immensely likable Jennifer Garner in the lead role among them—perhaps the worst thing about it, other than the startlingly level of racism on display in virtually every scene (including one in which Garner kills about 20 Hispanics in a piñata factory but leaves the sole white guy on hand alive to pass on some information), was how boring and pro forma it was—for all intents and purposes, it was little more than just another uninspired knockoff of “Death Wish” and we already had one of those earlier this year with that terrible Bruce Willis remake.
Avid filmgoers, particularly from the baby boomer generation, may recall fondly the late Charles Bronson ("Death Wish"), who often starred in similar movies as a rugged, weather-beaten, tough guy who took the law into his own hands to right a wrong.
Charles Bronson may have passed away but the spirit of his Death Wish films lives on — albeit in an absurdly twisted fashion — in F. Gary Gray’s ( The Italian Job Be Cool ) gleefully over-the-top revenge thriller Law Abiding Citizen .
Take the Charles Bronson “Death Wish” movies, cross them with cable’s “Dexter,” and add just a soupçon of the depraved “Saw” series, and you’ve got a recipe for LAW ABIDING CITIZEN.
However, Bronson aims for and succeeds at showing stylized action, dark humor and surrealism, while Law Abiding Citizen aims for gritty reality along the lines of Death Wish and exploring issues about the justice system, but misses the bullseye by more than a mile.
With reminders of many another lone seeker of justice making things noisy and violent in movies, (the overworked Charles Bronson in his "Death Wish" series, say) "The Equalizer" comes with it's own wrinkles in the time-honored genre -- not the least of which is actor Denzel Washington's cool presence as the man at the center.
But it’s possible “The Equalizer” owes its greatest debt to “Death Wish,” the controversial 1974 Charles Bronson celebration of vigilantism that was far more relevant then than “The Equalizer” is today, though the new movie is far more violent than all those other projects put together.
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You can trace a direct line from Michael Winner’s insidious 1974 vigilante film Death Wish to Peppermint, Philip Morel’s by-the-numbers, and problematic, revenge film.
Two underperforming action duds (From Paris With Love, The Gunman) later finds Morel following the spoor of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish cycle.
Vigilante revenge thrillers in the style of 1974’s Death Wish feel positively old-fashioned.
The woman looks more like a soccer mom than John Wick, “The Equalizer’s” Robert McCall or — going waaaaay back — Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” vigilante Paul Kersey.
Ever since Death Wish got the sub-genre ball rolling way back in 1974, these movie have popped up with increasing frequency and accelerating body counts.
“Peppermint” is more along the lines of Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish,” delivering vigilante justice in the name of revenge only.
Instead, Joker draws on the grubby “New York Shitty” cinematic canon of the late 1960s through mid-70s – with a particular debt owed to Death Wish (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and Taxi Driver (1976).
The aftermath of the shooting brings the kind of mixed reaction Paul Kersey got for gunning down bad humans in “Death Wish” (1974), including a riotous, eat-the-rich “resist” movement and the elevation of an aristocratic Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s dad, played by Brett Cullen, who had a small role in Nolan’s “Dark Knight Rises”) who comes out against the perceived class violence and launches a run for mayor.
Through this desolate landscape dances Phoenix’s lonely man, treading a path from victimisation to vengeance previously trodden by everyone from Charles Bronson in Death Wish to Michael Douglas in Falling Down .
It's like Death Wish (1974) in reverse.
The movie wears its influences like a squirting flower: Arthur is a melding of two Martin Scorsese protagonists, The King of Comedy ’s Rupert Pupkin and Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle (hence the gimmick casting of De Niro), and a cousin to Charles Bronson’s Death Wish vigilante.
Article content Going into Nobody , I’d thought it was one of those films where a non-violent dude has an extreme change of heart – picture Charles Bronson in Death Wish , Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs , Choi Min-sik in Oldboy , or any of their various remakes.
Nobody is an everyman’s revenge saga, the likes of which can be traced back to Charles Bronson’s Death Wish franchise of the 1970s and 80s, Liam Neeson’s Taken films and, of course, Keanu Reeves’ increasingly popular John Wick movies.
In philosophy, however, we’re stuck in Death Wish territory.
A lot of the reviews for "Falling Down" are going to compare it to earlier movies about white men who go berserk: "Joe," for example, or " Death Wish ."
Schumacher's film goes beyond the confines of vigilante films like Death Wish whose concerns stop at the criminal justice system.
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This is essentially a revenge story, in the grand tradition of Death Wish (although it bears a stronger resemblance to the recent Vin Diesel bomb, A Man Apart).
And harking back to the likes of Death Wish and Dirty Harry, the film is refreshing in this age of cockamamie political correctness in the un-PC way it appeals to the righteousness of viewers who want to see innocence protected, evil defeated and the guilty to suffer.
It helps to consider The Punisher comic book itself from the perspective of when it debuted: 1974, the era of movies like Dirty Harry, Death Wish and yes, Walking Tall.
In attempting to appeal to a wider audience, The Punisher never quite becomes the 21st century's answer to Death Wish.
After all, blowing things up is what movies do best, and if you connect a good sense of payback to it -- as in Death Wish, for example -- it can be a delicious guilty pleasure.
It's based on the Marvel comic book; it could easily be mistaken for an update of "Death Wish," with Jane's Frank Castle -- once "the finest undercover op" in Tampa -- trying to take down slimy, ultrawealthy Howard Saint (Travolta), whose henchmen turned Castle's family reunion into a multi-generational massacre.
Knowing that the director and his co-writer Nick Castle (whose handful of writing credits are well and good, but surely we all know him best as the man behind the mask as Michael in Halloween) were consciously channeling Death Wish makes it clear just how great Escape from New York really is: the Carpenter film takes the 1974 revenge flick's vague notion of the city as a concrete and glass and steel jungle and goes to such infinitely richer places with it that only a madman would think to compare the two.