There are films that are classics because of the artistry with which they are crafted, and there are films that are classics for having an outsized impact on our culture, but Death Wish is neither, it is a film that is important because it captures the mood of an age.

I have never watched the entire film. Not because of a stand to refuse to participate, but simply it never was around in a form for me to watch at the time and place where I had an interest. I had seen scenes and I had even seen the closer couple of shoots, but never the entire film, and certainly never in one go from front to back. It is an interesting experience, particularly from a position 40 years after it was released, and after it had spawned a franchise of its own.

Death Wish is at heart a political film buried in the national psyche of the United States during the 70’s. For those not around during that time, it was dreary and depressing for America. Vietnam had fallen, the Arab oil embargo had shocked the economic system, Watergate had destroyed faith in the government, and the idea that things were bad and only going to get worse ruled the day. The Stark motto from the Games of Thrones would fit perfectly the mood, ‘Winter is Coming.’ In addition to out of control inflation, energy storages, government corruption, terrorism, crime began surging during the decade.

Spoilers Ahead

Paul Kersey is a liberal engineer living in New York City with a good job, a lovely and loving wife, a daughter and a son in law.  His life is charmed and he has the empathy to care about the lower classes even as his co-workers joking advocate for concentration camps for the criminal classes. All of this is destroyed when three young thugs – listed in the credits as ‘freaks’, one played a young Jeff Goldblum – perform a home invasion, beating his wife to death and sexually assaulting his daughter. His daughter’s mind collapses and she is soon committed to an asylum. After a business trip west, where Paul is reintroduced to firearms, he had been a Contentious Objector during the Korean War, Paul returns to New York City with a revolver, and a mission. (BTW this image I grabbed shows a semi-automatic, not accurate to the film, but I like the emotional charge of the image.)

Paul begins walking the street, making himself a prime targets for muggers and thieves, and then when confronted he kills them. Unlike the sequels that followed, this is not an action film. The scenes where Paul is attacked and kills are rather brief, without elaborate set-ups or stunts. This movie is mostly a comment on the out control crime and plays to the public fears and secret desires on that matter. If you want to understand why today – four decades later – politicians are still terrified of being labeled as ‘soft on crime’ watch this film and understand it was a hit because this is how people perceived their world at that time.

Paul doesn’t make grand statements, threats, or jokes when he kills the criminals. He kills them and runs away; very much contrary to how action films transformed in the 80s.

The police of course are searching for the vigilante killer, but in the end it is a political decision to not arrest him and try him, but just make him leave town. After all mugging are dropping by 50% they can’t have the streets become lawless. So in the end, Paul is forced out of New York, moves to Chicago, and we are left with the certainty that his compulsion is far from satisfied.

This was an interesting film to watch. It is not structured as an action film, nor as a typical drama story. There isn’t a real arc to the plot. Paul is changed by the brutal crime, but there is no third act confrontation or resolution. The unnamed freaks are never caught, Paul never delivers personal justice; the film ends simply promising that this is an ever-continuing situation.  This is a quintessential piece of 70’s film making, a story without a heroic resolution.