I do remember watching "Death Wish" back in my childhood in the 1980s, and remembering that Charles Bronson seemed to be a cool guy in the movie. Then I got a chance to revisit the franchise many, many years later and of course I did sit down to watch the movies again.I have to honestly state that this is a very slow paced movie. "Death Wish" is based on a very good concept though, and it had lots of potential for taking the character Paul Kersey and evolve on him. And I said it had potential to do so, but it failed to do so.The blood in the "Death Wish" movie was painstakingly and obviously just brightly colored paint, as it looked so fake it would even make a blind person go "wait a minute!"It had a very predictable storyline, and you knew the outcome of the movie from the very beginning, which was a shame because director and writer Michael Winner didn't offer much to challenge the intellect of the audience.It was fun to see a young Jeff Goldblum as a hoodlum in this movie.Why this movie spawned a 2018 remake is beyond me, because it is adequate enough as it was.

"Death Wish" was the film that made Charles Bronson into an overnight star and a box office draw. He had made several movies in Europe for a while and became a star over there. He had worked with the British director Michael Winner on three previous occasions and the films they made are great. The above film is their best collaboration. Released in 1974, "Death Wish" pulls no punches in depicting the efforts of Paul Kersey who kills off as many muggers and street punks as he can. These events have resulted after his wife is murdered and his daughter viciously attacked. The audience is truly on the side of Bronson as he takes the law into his own hands. New York is the ideal setting and location for this film. It works to the films advantage to be made in winter time. This adds to the gritty and harsh look of the film - shades of "The French Connection." Charles Bronson was never an actor in the usual sense of the word but his image is perfect for his role here. The supporting cast are excellent, look out for Jeff Goldblum in an early role as a mugger. The plot is fairly streamlined which is an advantage, as the film is kept on an even keel without any unnecessary subplots. The violence isn't particularly pleasant, especially at the beginning of the film. It is no wonder that the B.B.F.C refused to grant "Death Wish" a video certificate when all videos considered for release in the early 80s in Britain, had to be reclassified. As a result, "Death Wish" was exceptionally hard to obtain. Then in 2000, the film suddenly turned up on video, albeit in a censored form. Now on DVD, we have the uncensored version. There are some great action scenes along the way but "Death Wish" is more than that, it is making both political and social comments about vigilantes and law and order in general. The dialogue is certainly above average, considering the films content. It could have easily been the case of just producing cliché- ridden stuff but luckily, this doesn't happen. It is debatable whether Bronson is slightly unhinged in some way, as the vigilante. I would say it is more likely he is expressing the anger and injustice he feels after what has happened to his family and to his way of life. The sequels that followed are pretty good but the original is still my favourite. A classic film of 1970s American cinema and not to be missed.

A New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad after his wife is murdered by street punks in which he randomly goes out and kills would-be muggers on the mean streets after dark. Death Wish is the kind of action movie that started this whole "Action" thing long before Stallone and Schwarzenegger showed up with a really good performance by Charles Bronson and a lot of gun shooting Death Wish is a really good action thriller and let's hope that the remake won't suck. I still haven't seen the sequels tho but i think that so far this is the most serious one and the best one in the franchise there's a lot of action and i loved the character of Bronson and the way he killed all those men.

Watching this movie again more than 40 years after it first came out is interesting. While it can still touch a nerve somewhere deep down inside, on the surface at least, it seems heavily clichéd to the point of being cloying. It seems heavy-handed and in terms of its style very heavily dated. I do not think it has stood up all that well to the test of time. Anybody who saw this as an adolescent in the 70's should have enough life experience by now to know it is almost as much of a fantasy as Star Wars. Even where crimes of the nature seen at the beginning of this movie do occur, in real life they don't look, or more importantly, feel the way they are depicted here. It would be interesting to see a thoughtful modern-day remake, but it is unlikely anybody will do a thoughtful one. Instead, you only get even more fantastic, exploitative renditions, in the light of which, it is no wonder America has become a filled with foolish, immature, paranoid gun-crazies that can't go to the bathroom anymore without slinging an assault rifle. As Roger Ebert once said while discussing film noir, "no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic." Hell, maybe the answer to this movie in 2015 is a movie about a "vigilante" who shoots gun-crazies to prove how ridiculous they are. Under these circumstances, I give this one a mere six.