I Watched Death Wish
If you know anything about me, you know that I am a big fan of vigilante justice. Why? Because it is the only kind. Oh, there is man-made law and civil order and shit, but when it comes to root-definition “justice” you have to do that shit yourself. So, it should come as no surprise that I looooved Death Wish, which I saw last night. Here are some reasons why I did:
- Vigilante justice is basically the main character in Death Wish, i.e. finally a character I can root for.
- Within the first two minutes of the movie, Charles Bronson suggests to his wife that they fuck on the beach. This links vigilante justice to hot public beach sex, which is the other thing I am a big fan of.
- Within the first five minutes of the movie, a gang of thugs breaks into Charles Bronson’s lush UWS apartment and beats his wife to death and his daughter into a psychotic coma. This is a bonus because a) The thugs all look like they hang out at Galopogos, and b) The thug who deals the death blows to CB’s wife’s face while shouting “Rich cunt! I kill rich cunts!” is actually Jeff Goldblum.
- ARE THE COPS GOING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS? OF COURSE NOT. This movie presents the harsh reality of modern society: you can’t trust no cops!
- So Charles Bronson becomes a vigilante, and none too soon because every single time he leaves the house he is mugged at knife point. He is also mugged every time he rides the subway, every time he leaves a diner, and every time he walks alone at night by the Hudson river in a junkie filled park that everyone else knows not to walk in at night. That is the thing about vigilante justice, sometimes you have to go in search of things that need it.
- Everyone in the ’70s apparently read Harper’s magazine. I call bullshit.
- I’ll just skip ahead to the ending where what happens is that crime goes way down in New York because everyone’s pissing their pants about the vigilante so when the police finally catch Charles Bronson they don’t want to arrest him because then crime will go back up, and they also don’t want to make a martyr out of him because he’s very popular among the upper class white people who get crimed so often, so what they do is they force him to leave town. He is an architect, too, by the way, so he gets on a train and goes to his office in Chicago and when he gets off the train and you see this big banner that says “Welcome to Chicago,” if you are me, you actually say out loud to no one “OH! There is a lot of crime in Chicago! VIGILANTE TIME!”
Speaking of vigilante justice, the major news story this week has been about the potential massacre of 12 innocent Iraqi women and children by a group of marines after one of their fellow marines was killed by an IED. I heard on NPR last night that in response to these events, the military is going to administer a moral/ethics training program to all of the troops. It was reported that this program will take approximately 30 days to complete. Well, surprise, Uncle Sam, I’m going to save you a whole lot of time and money. Listen up, troops, here is your training. Just answer this question:
When confronted with an unarmed two-year-old baby girl you:
a) Shoot it in the face
b) Don’t shoot it in the face
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:27 am
Thanks for the spoiler . . . NOT!
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:29 am
As someone who loathes spoilers, I can tell you that it does not matter. There is no tension or surprise in this movie, just raw justice.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
I watched Death Wish a few years ago because I needed a vigilantism fix, and I had always known about the movie from the TV ads I saw for it when I was a kid, both when it was in the theaters, then when it was on the network movie shows. But I wasn’t old enough to watch it back then.
So, I’ve always wondered: Why is it called Death Wish?
Who has a death wish? Not Charles Bronson. The thugs he kills? Why? They think they’re invincible.
What do you think?
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
It’s the old trope of “How do you stop a man with nothing left to lose?” It’s only when his wife is taken from him and his daughter is institutionalized that he stops giving into the fear. He no longer cares that much about his own safety, and it’s this recklessness that gives him strength in the face of knife-wielding muggers of any race or leather-jacket-style.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:48 am
I see your point, but I don’t buy it. You say he doesn’t care “that much” about his personal safety — but he’s not on a kamikaze mission, either. He wants to survive so he can kill every thug in America every day. If he has a death wish, it’s the wish for the death of everyone else, not himself.
Oh well, it’s a movie . . . . series!
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:14 am
I like the Death Wish parody—I think it was Death Wish 10—done on the Simpsons: Quick shot of very old Bronson in a hospital bed. He says, “I wish I was dead.” End scene.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Look, the working title was “Super Vigilante Man.” Be happy with Death Wish.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
And do we get someone we can root for when we get a real vigilante justice killer for justice? No, we get nebbishy little Bernie Goetz who looks like he’d annoy us by talking about his cats all the time.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
couple of points:
1. bernie would be talking you to death about his pet squirrels, not cats. he’s the squirrel guy. oh and libertarianism, which would initially seem like a respite from all the squirrel talk but then reveal itself to be much, much worse. and i’m sympathetic to his views, dammit!
2. what is the consensus on ‘walking tall,’ either the original or the rock-fueled remake? (i just joined netflix.)
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
nobody’s seen walking tall? fuck you guys. i’ll put it on my “queue,” make a blog and do my own post about vigilante justice flicks.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:05 am
Umm, reality check: an unarmed two-year-old baby girl is just an AK away from being an armed two-year-old baby girl. Not so cut-and-dried now, is t?
June 5th, 2006 at 1:24 am
Dude, I was hanging out with a bunch of people this weekend and no one knew who Charles Bronson was. FUCKING MOVE OUT HERE ALREADY. THESE GODDAMN FUCKING HIPSTERS NEED SOME SERIOUS BRONSONING.
Cool is the disease. I am the cure.
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