While I wasn't overly impressed with the first "Death Wish" movie from 1974, I still went on to watch the rest of the movies in the franchise.It turned out that "Death Wish II" was almost exactly the same story as in the first "Death Wish" movie. With the exception that it takes place in California instead of New York. But this time it is his daughter who dies, whereas it was the wife in the first movie.Sure, "Death Wish II" was fun to watch, but don't expect to be intellectually challenged in any way by director Michael Winner.Now, I will say that it was hilarious to watch Lawrence Fishbourne in this movie, especially since he looked like a gay futuristic skater.

Death Wish 2 is one of the most disgusting and immoral "mainstream" movies from the 80s. It makes the rest of the Death Wish movies look like cinematic masterpieces. It makes me want to rewatch "Death Sentence" with Kevin Bacon. It's pointless and cruel...it's scene after scene of ugliness and sadism. Some people actually defend the pornographic scene where the maid is raped and killed, saying stuff like: "the director wanted to show how awful rape really is!" Yeah, thank you Michael Winner (ironic name), for showing us that it's wrong to rape and murder people. What? Not one, but TWO rape scenes in the same movie? How generous.No wonder the author of the novel hated these movies. They completely miss the point. The point of the novel is that revenge and vigilantism is a bad idea. This movie does the opposite...and even then, it fails, because there's no hero to root for in DW2. He doesn't accomplish anything good...he just kills a bunch of scumbags. What a pointless movie.The Death Wish movies are often labeled as "right-wing" fantasies, but that's not entirely true. It combines the worst elements from both worlds. Right-wing extremists will love the "guns and violence solve everything" stuff. And there's nothing leftists love more than sexual deviance, profanity and eeevil Christians.This year, a new version of Death Wish came out. Judging from the trailer it's just more of the same sadistic garbage. Don't waste your time or money.

I liked the 1974 original, but this was a chore to sit through. It's a very, very poor rehash, clearly done purely for the money. All around bad acting, very unimaginative script, Charles Bronson acts like he phoned in his performance, the villains are clownish and annoying, and I really couldn't stand Charles' wife.In fact I lost some respect for Mr. Bronson while watching this tripe. Do yourself a favor and give this one a miss. If you are looking for good Bronson movies: "Mr. Majestyk (1974)" is awesome.

The original "Death Wish" practically screamed sequel, and we get it here when Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) relocates to Los Angeles and hell follows with him. Sounds like the Book of Revelations, doesn't it? Chapter Six, Verse Eight to be exact.Well, there's little of redeeming social value here, but it's not as over the top as the series would get with the follow up to this one, "Death Wish 3". You just had to know that when five thugs rape the maid, beat up on Kersey and kidnap his daughter, it's not going to be a good day. For the bad guys that is. Kersey takes his one man wrecking crew job seriously, and proceeds to blow away everyone who took part in the initial violence. Laurence Fishburne appears as one of the bad guys in what could have been a career ending move but things fortunately worked out for him OK.Catching these films in the series out of order, I was surprised to see Jimmy Page's name attached to the credits list as the music composer for "Death Wish 3"; little did I know he got the nod for this one as well. I already used the 'Dazed and Confused' analogy in writing up my review for that picture, but in keeping with the spirit of things, it seemed to me that the page Bronson was taking out of the Led Zeppeling songbook this time would have been something like 'Your Time is Gonna Come'.