Desejo de Matar

I guess by now you could call this movie a "classic." It would meet most definitions. It was so popular that it spawned a number of sequels, but they just got dumb and dumber. This is one of the most famous "revenge" movies ever made and still stands up today.

This was a very, very simple story and it panders to our base instincts which is probably why it was so successful. Most people want justice, and they want it now....which is what this movie preaches. At the time, the movie was shocking. If it came out today, it wouldn't have nearly the impact. However, the early scene of the mother and daughter raped and killed is still horrifying. That will never change.

The story then slows down as we see the transformation of the husband, from conscientious objector to vigilante. When Charles Bronson hits the streets, the film picks up big-time. The movie also ends on a very satisfying note.

A New York City architect (Charles Bronson) becomes a one-man vigilante squad after his wife (Hope Lange) is murdered by street punks in which he randomly goes out and kills would-be muggers on the mean streets after dark.

Not only is this the film debut of both Jeff Goldblum and Denzel Washington, it is possibly the greatest revenge film of all time. A mild-mannered veteran -- now working as an architect of all things -- going ballistic? Awesome! I have no idea why I waited so long to see this movie... it kicks all kinds of butt, and presents a very interesting amoral picture. Not immoral, but amoral. Do you cheer him on or hope he gets caught? It is a timeless dilemma.

The Death Wish films are not my favorite Charles Bronson works. But there's no doubt that Bronson attained his enduring popularity on the strength of the five films in the series.

In this the original Death Wish, Charles Bronson introduces us to Paul Kersey, successful architect and family man with wife Hope Lange and married daughter Kathleen Tolan. Bronson's well ordered life takes an abrupt change when a home invasion robbery results in the death of Hope Lange and the rape of Kathleen Tolan.

All the acting is done with facial expressions here. Bronson usually plays stoic characters in his films, but in the Death Wish series he never articulates what's going on with him, but you see it in a face that was made for movie closeups in the same way that Gary Cooper's and John Wayne's faces were.

A trip out west on a project brings him in touch with a different mentality about settling urban problems and the present of a 32 Caliber pistol from the man he was contracted to work for gives Bronson a whole new outlook. And a mission in life to rid the world of street criminals.

1974 may have been the year Richard Nixon had his downfall, but this was the president elected on a law and order platform. George Wallace sent his audiences into delight when he talked about running protesters down with his vehicle. Death Wish struck quite a nerve with the American public because unlike Dirty Harry, Bronson was a citizen like you and me who just decided to act.

There are two really good supporting performances in Death Wish. A New Yorker to his fingertips, Vincent Gardenia plays the dogged police detective who's put on the vigilante killer case. And Stuart Margolin as Bronson's western host who presents him with the tool of his trade is also worth noting.

In 1982 Bronson finally due to a lot of audience demand and the fact that the money was too good to turn down, repeated his role of Paul Kersey in a series of Death Wish films of varying quality. Nothing like this one though.

Charles Bronson was already a major movie star in 1974 in Europe and a top action actor in the USA but it was "Death Wish" released that year that made him the super star that he became. What's so unusual is that in the movie "Death Wish" he played a man who was a pacifist all of his life, he served in the Korean War as a conscientious objector, who then turned into the vigilante executioner! A role which Bronson has become known for and identified with more then any of the scores of actions roles that he made during his long film career.

Bronson as well as director Michael Winner and writer Brian Garfield touched a raw nerve in "Death Wish" with the American people in big cities under siege like no other movie ever did before and, now some 30 years later, after. Since "Death Wish" there must have been made over a hundred films with it's theme but none had the impact that "Death Wish" with Charles Bronson had.

A group of tugs get Joanna Kersey's, Hope Lange, address from a delivery slip of a local grocery store and acting as if their delivering her groceries break into Joanna's apartment and savagely attack her and beat and rape her daughter Carol, Kathleen Tolan. Paul Kersey, Charles Bronson, comes home to learn that his wife and daughter are in the hospital rushes over to see how they are. Kersey finds out that his wife is dead and his daughter is mentally destroyed and needs to be institutionalized for life.

The whole world around Paul Kersey falls apart like a house of cards and he's left alone with everything that he loved dead or as good as dead. Some time later going to Arizona to do his job as a land developer for his firm in NYC he's given a .32 handgun as a gift by the person that he worked for Ames Janichill, Stuart Margolis, for the great job that he did for him.

One night back home in New York City taking a stroll in the park with the gun on him Kersey is accosted by a local junkie who pulls a handgun on him but Kersey draws first and shoots and kills him. Sick at first over what he did, killed a human being, Kersey like a wild beast from the jungle tasting blood for the fist time begins to roam the streets of New York at night for prey. A vengeful Kersey goes out looking for criminals to put out of commission, like those who killed and raped his wife and daughter, as some kind of revenge and retribution against them. In the process Kersey puts the criminals of the city of New York into a state of absolute terror and panic. In his guerrilla-like actions Kersey knocks off some dozen of them sending the the city's crime rate falling as much as 70%! All this with the ineffective, in stopping crime, police being more interested in stopping "The Vigilante" then stopping the criminals!

The movie "Death Wish" hit a raw nerve with the public as well as the local politicians and police because it showed how, in the movie at least, one man with a gun and knowing how to use it can make a difference when it comes to stopping crime. The story is not that unlikely as those against it would want the public to believe. There's been many times when average people took to protecting themselves, with firearms, and did a much better job then the police; which is just what Paul Kersey did in the movie. That may have been one of the reasons that those in authority were so much against the film.

When Bernie Goetz in December 1984 gunned down four muggers, much like Charles Bronson did in the movie "Death Wish", who tried to attack him in the New York subway crime dropped a lot more then if one hundred policemen were put on the trains. Nobody can doubt now that Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" was not only a major milestone in films about urban crime but also a major milestone in what the public thinks about crime and what's best to do to stop it.

One of the best favorite action movies of all time, Death Wish glitters Charles Bronson's glory famously. Followed by 4 script-free episodes the first episode had inspired millions worldwide. At present(2009) while the remake version is being filmed I have to say that; no matter who will perform Paul Kersey for the second time, he won't be able to impress us as Bronson did.

Rather than Bronson's performance Death Wish has its significant themes and screenplay components which were used at almost every action/crime movie later on, thus became clichés of their genre. Spending a lot of the running time through the bad guys' side is the most fundamental component. This development was so modern and original, after a while it changed the outlook of the Crime genre.

Death Wish is nearly as good as Eastwood's Dirty Harry, with just a different taste. Obviously, this should have been produced only once; since the sequels misrepresented its purpose.