There comes a time when you just have to say – enough.
For some reason or another, Death Wish seems to come back again and again, even in the form of this year’s remake starring Bruce Willis.
Death Wish is a product very much of the political and social consciousness of 1974, when the original film debuted. Admittedly, even today, it represents a reflection on people determined to take action against those elements of society that have tainted good.
By the release of Death Wish 3 (1985), directed by Michael Winner, the series had exhausted whatever semblance of a plot remained from the original film and come to rely on a more action-based narrative. Notably, the film was shot at the now-demolished old Lambeth Hospital to cut production costs.
It is clear that the blossoming home video market, plus the producers’ desire to squeeze as much return on their golden egg of a franchise, enabled them to press ahead with two more entries in the series, but this writer suspects there was a fair amount of ho-hum response when these two were originally announced in the film trade press.
Death Wish IV – The Crackdown (1987) was the last film to be made under the Cannon Films banner and on paper actually does seem like a tasty prospect, given that it was directed by J. Lee Thompson, responsible for the war favourite The Guns of Navarone (1961) and the original version of Cape Fear (1962) (remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese), and written by Gail Morgan Hickman, who wrote the third Dirty Harry entry, The Enforcer (1976).
The Crackdown sees Paul Kersey (Bronson), still an architect and involved with journalist Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). However, it isn’t long before the death of her daughter Erica (Dana Barron) from a cocaine overdose prompts Kersey to go out and seek retribution, after being blackmailed by local tabloid publisher Nathan White (John P. Ryan), who aims to provide him with the tools to wipe out two drug kingpins and their gangs…
Death Wish V – The Face of Death (1994), produced under Menahem Golan’s 21st Century company, sees Kersey under a pseudonym of Paul Stewart via the Witness Protection Program and now involved with Olivia Regent (Lesley-Anne Down), a New York-based fashion head, who comes into conflict with her ex-husband, mobster Tommy O’Shea (Michael Parks), who is father to their daughter, Olivia. A moment of physical violence against Olivia prompts Kersey to take action per se…
These films remain one-dimensional and simplistic in their assessment of society’s ills. There is an interesting discussion within the concept of a vigilante doing something for good – which, if the producers and writers had taken more time to sit down and brainstorm, could have created a series like the Dirty Harry films, in which Harry Callahan had to deal with an idea or feeling that reflected where crime and society was going.
Sadly, the producers were only ever interested in profit at the expense of quality, the death-knell for any film that aims to achieve something at the box office. Picture-wise, the Blu-ray remasters are the only virtue here.
DEATH WISH IV AND V (1987/1994) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: J. LEE THOMPSON, ALLAN A. GOLDSTEIN / SCREENPLAY: GAIL MORGAN HICKMAN, ALLAN A. GOLDSTEIN / STARRING: CHARLES BRONSON, KAY LENZ, LESLEY-ANNE DOWN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AU), TBA (UK)
