DEATH WISH LIST

10/10 – OSCAR BAIT
9/10 – EXCELLENT
8/10 – BRILLIANT
7/10 – VERY GOOD
6/10 – GOOD
5/10 – AVERAGE
4/10 – WATCHABLE
3/10 – POOR
2/10 – SLOW
1/10 – AWFUL
0/10 – UNWATCHABLE

DEATHWISH – 10/10
His immediate reaction is one of simple grief. Then something happens which suggests a different kind of response. His office sends him to Arizona on a job, and he meets a land developer who's a gun nut. The man takes Bronson to his gun club, watches him squeeze off a few perfect practice rounds, and slips a present into his suitcase when he heads back to New York. It's a .32-caliber revolver.Alone in his apartment, Bronson examines snapshots from his recent Hawaiian vacation with his wife. Then he examines the gun. He goes out into the night, is attacked by a mugger and shoots him dead. Then he goes home and throws up. But the taste for vengeance, once acquired, has a fascination of its own. And the last half of "Death Wish" is essentially a series of cat-and-mouse games, in which Bronson poses as a middle-aged citizen with a bag of groceries and then murders his attackers.They are, by the way, everywhere. Director Michael Winner gives us a New York in the grip of a reign of terror; this doesn't look like 1974, but like one of those bloody future cities in science-fiction novels about anarchy in the twenty-first century. Literally every shadow holds a mugger; every subway train harbors a killer; the park is a breeding ground for crime. Urban paranoia is one thing, but "Death Wish" is another. If there were really that many muggers in New York, Bronson could hardly have survived long enough to father a daughter, let alone grieve her.The movie has an eerie kind of fascination, even though its message is scary. Bronson and Winner have worked together on several films, and they've perfected the Bronson persona. He's a steely instrument of violence, with few words and fewer emotions. In "Death Wish" we get just about the definitive Bronson; rarely has a leading role contained fewer words or more violence.And Winner directs with a cool precision. He's one of the most efficient directors of action and violence. His muggings and their surprise endings have a sort of inevitable rhythm to them; we're set up for each one almost like the gunfights in Westerns. There's never any question of injustice, because the crimes are attempted right there before our eyes. And then Bronson becomes judge and jury --and executioner.- - - Spoiler alert! - - -That's what's scary about the film. It's propaganda for private gun ownership and a call to vigilante justice. Even the cops seem to see it that way; Bronson becomes a folk hero as the New York Vigilante, and the mugging rate drops fifty percent. So the police want to catch Bronson, not to prosecute him for murder, but to offer him a deal: Get out of town, stay out of town, and we'll forget this. Bronson accepts the deal, and in the movie's last scene we see him taking an imaginary bead on a couple of goons in Chicago.

DEATHWISH II – 6/10
You will have noticed that I've given a "no stars" rating for "Death Wish II," starring Charles Bronson as an urban vigilante. A word of explanation. In my movie rating system, the most a movie can get is four stars ("My Dinner With Andre") and the least is ordinarily half a star (even "The Beast Within" got a whole star). I award "no stars" only to movies that are artistically inept and morally repugnant. So "Death Wish II" joins such unsavory company as "Penitentiary II" and "I Spit on Your Grave." And that, in a way, is a shame. I have a certain admiration for the screen presence of Charles Bronson. In his good roles, he can be lean, quiet, and efficient. He often co-stars with his wife, Jill Ireland, as he does in this movie, and she is a pleasant and capable actress. They were charming together in a little-seen movie named "From Noon to Three."This time, however, Bronson and Ireland and everyone else involved with "Death Wish II" create a great disappointment. Although the original "Death Wish" (1974) had its detractors, it was an effective movie that spoke directly to the law-and-order mentality of the Nixon-Ford era. It was directed with a nice slick polish by Michael Winner, and, on its own terms, it worked. "Death Wish II" is a disaster by comparison. It has the same director, Winner, but he directs the dialogue scenes as if the actors' shoes were nailed to the floor. It has two of the same stars--Bronson and New York cop Vincent Gardenia--but they seem shell-shocked by weariness in this film. It has the same plot (Bronson's loved ones are attacked, and he goes out into the streets to murder muggers). But while the first film convinced me of Bronson's need for vengeance, this one is just a series of dumb killings.You will remember that "Death Wish" opened with home invaders killing Bronson's wife and raping his daughter. After Bronson used himself as bait to trap and kill nine New York City muggers, he became a folk hero. Gardenia, the cop, found out who he was, but decided not to arrest him. Bronson left town, and in this film, he's in Los Angeles. The film opens with his daughter being killed, and then Bronson hits the streets again. Ireland plays the woman he loves, and who suspects his guilty secret.What's most shocking about "Death Wish II" is the lack of artistry and skill in the filmmaking. The movie is underwritten and desperately underplotted, so that its witless action scenes alternate with lobotomized dialogue passages. The movie doesn't contain an ounce of life. It slinks onto the screen and squirms for a while, and is over.

DEATHWISH III – 7/10
"Death Wish 3" is a marginally better movie than the second part of this series; enough better to earn a one-star rating, instead of none. The action, direction and special effects are all better than the last time around, which isn't saying much, since "Death Wish II" was so ineptly directed and edited that it was an insult even to audiences that were looking for a bad movie.The plot is as before. Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, who was an architect in the original 1974 film, but has now apparently moved into a new career, as a professional vigilante. After knocking off muggers in Kansas City and thieves in Chicago, he is back in New York at the beginning of this film, just in time to find an old friend dying after a vicious beating. Kersey is arrested for the crime, but allowed back on the streets by the police captain (Ed Lauter), who offers a deal: Kersey can murder all the creeps he wants, if he keeps the cops informed. Kersey does not agree to this deal, but Lauter does not seem to notice. Indeed, by the end of the film, the two of them are stalking the mean streets side-by-side, like killers in the old west. Bronson moves into a tenement building that seems to be in the middle of a vast burned-out wasteland, but that is still occupied by terrified old people. Among the tenants are an old watch repairman (Martin Balsam), who keeps a couple of machineguns in his closet, and an elderly Jewish couple who live on the first floor and make stuffed cabbage rolls while the creeps jump in through the window and toss their TV set outside. The neighborhood is ruled by a gang headed by Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy), who wears a reverse Mohawk: He keeps his hair on the sides, but shaves down the middle, to make room for a gang symbol in war paint. O'Herlihy looks a little like Richard Widmark, and is quite satisfactory as a snarling, sadistic creep. He is also, of course, white. One of the hypocrisies practiced by the Death Wish movies is that they ignore racial tension in big cities. In their horrible new world, all of the gangs are integrated, so that the movies can't be called racist. I guess it's supposed to be heartwarming to see whites, blacks and Latinos working side by side to rape, pillage and murder. Not quite so much equality applies to the victims, however. All of the good speaking roles go to white victims (especially Balsam). Two Latinos get to be minor supporting players (the wife is raped and murdered, the husband gets to sob and pound his fist on the table). The black victims are represented by an old lady who gets her purse snatched. If it seems strange for me to be making a racial head-count like this, reflecting that the filmmakers no doubt assigned races to their characters with equal cynicism. Since there is not a single character in this movie who has to belong to any particular race, "Death Wish 3" could have had Bronson protecting black citizens against black gang violence. That would reflect the reality of most big cities, but it would not, of course, have been as commercial. My only other observation has to be about Bronson himself. He looks very tired in this movie. In interviews, he has expressed his unhappiness with it. Despite the fact that he's the central character, he doesn't seem eager to leap in and take charge. He probably says fewer words in "Death Wish 3" than any other major leading character since the introduction of sound. My guess is that he utters less than 100 words in the whole movie. My hunch is, he would have liked that number to be closer to zero.

DEATHWISH IV – 6/10
There is oddly enough, a philosoph ical premise to ''Death Wish 4.'' ''Anyone connected to drugs deserves to die,'' says a rich man who wants Charles Bronson to wipe out all the drug lords in Los Angeles. ''I need a few days to think about it,'' Mr. Bronson replies, as if he's a coy job applicant holding out for more money.In fact, this is the man who avenged the murders of his wife, daughter and assorted friends in the previous ''Death Wish'' movies, a man who keeps an arsenal of weapons hidden in a closet behind his refrigerator, just in case. His girlfriend's teen-age daughter has just died from an overdose of cocaine, so why does he hesitate at all? Before long Paul Kersey, a k a. the Vigilante, is back in action shooting up the two largest drug rings in the city.Why Kersey is presented as a hero rather than a sociopath is also something of a mystery, but the film makers' belief in a streetwise death penalty for drug dealers seems intended to give the audience license to settle back and enjoy the killings. The victims, both innocent and guilty, are all cartoon thin, so it's not as if real people are dying. In ''Death Wish 4'' murder is literally an amusement, with some of the more spectacular killings set in a flashy roller-skating rink and on a bumper-car ride.Charles Bronson is an almost emblematic figure here, so no one thinks it's at all strange that the feared vigilante is a middle-aged architect known by the blue Toronado he drives. ''Death Wish 4,'' which opened yesterday at the Warner Twin and other theaters, is as efficient and predictable as Kersey himself, and inoffensive as long as you can root for a sociopathic hero. CARYN JAMESTHE CAST DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, directed by J. Lee Thompson; screenplay by Gail Morgan Hickman; director of photography, Gideon Porath; music by Paul McCallum, Valentine McCallum and John Bisharat; production designer, Whitney Brooke Wheeler; produced by Pancho Kohner; released by the Cannon Group. At the Warner Twin, Broadway and 47th Street; UA East, First Avenue at 85th Street; 23d Street West Triplex, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues; Coliseum Twin, Broadway at 181st Street; Movie Center 5, 125th Street between Powell and Douglass Boulevards, and New Delancey, 62 Delancey Street. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is rated R.

DEATHWISH V – 1/10
Among the devices used to maim, torture and kill in "Death Wish V: The Face of Death" are an industrial sewing machine, a steam press, an acidic chemical bath and a shrink-wrap machine that trusses up a victim who is then suspended on a hook like an item of laundry. These tools of the trade are in a clothing factory that is the setting for the film's creepier action sequences. There is also a soccer ball, operated by remote control that explodes in someone's face. But the most grisly scene in a movie that has one of the highest levels of gratuitous sadism to be found in a modern film, is one in which a mobster in drag follows a beautiful woman into the ladies room of a restaurant, gags her and repeatedly smashes her face into a wall mirror."Death Wish V," which opened locally on Friday, is the latest, and one hopes the last, in the 20-year-old series starring Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a middle-class civilian who takes the law into his own hands. Even though its characters tote cellular phones and live in ultramodern high-rise apartments, the film still has a sleazy 1970's ambiance. And while Mr. Bronson goes through the motions of revenge with his characteristic deliberation, he looks puffy and sounds terminally bored. In this episode, Kersey, who is teaching in a suburban New York college, reluctantly returns to vigilantism when his fiancee, Olivia (Lesley Anne Down), a fashion model turned clothing manufacturer, is menaced by organized crime. Adding a nasty twist to a preposterous plot is the fact that Tommy O'Shea (Michael Parks), the head racketeer, is Olivia's ex-husband. In the screenplay by Allen Goldstein, who directed, Tommy emerges as a sadistic, racist, child-hating archfiend. What is especially repugnant about the "Death Wish" movies is the cruelty with which the supposedly mild-mannered Kersey dispenses vigilante justice. It isn't enough that the bad guys eventually get theirs. They must look their avenger in the face before being executed with maximum agony and humiliation. When Tommy is finally pushed into a swirling acidic bath, the camera makes sure he surfaces at least twice, missing several layers of skin and still screaming. "Death Wish V" is rated R. In addition to scenes of extreme violence and cruelty, it includes nudity and strong language. Death Wish V -- The Face of Death Directed and written by Allen Goldstein; produced by Damian Lee; released by Trimark Pictures. Running time: 95 minutes. This film is rated R. Paul Kersey . . . Charles Bronson Olivia Regent . . . Lesley Anne Down Chelsea Regent . . . Erica Lancaster Tommy O'Shay . . . Michael Parks Lieut. King . . . Kenneth Welsh