Justin here again. A couple of days ago we took a look at the first Death Wish movie. We’ll be continuing on today and tomorrow.
Death Wish II
Death Wish II occupies an interesting place in the series. It’s essentially a remake of the first Death Wish, but the location has changed to Los Angeles. Now Paul Kersey is living alone with help from his Latina house keeper. His new girlfriend is a reporter. His mentally scarred daughter is recovering with some serious psychological help. Of course things go horribly horribly wrong again when a new band of punks – yadda yadda yadda, I’m sure you can figure it out. Kersey’s daughter’s death was straight out of Dario Argento’s Suspiria though.
This time out, Paul remembers the specific people who did this and hunts them down. Any random criminal that happens to cross his path gets it too. The key difference in this outing is that Paul begins to live a double life. He checks into a seedy flop house and emerges each night in ratty clothes and a beanie to fight crime. He seems to manage to lead both lives until a NYC detective from part one comes out to stop Paul.
Other interesting additions here include a very young Laurence Fishburne as one of the gang members. He even wears Kanye glasses. Michael Winner directed this movie as well, but it lacks the style and emotion from the first movie. Winner recruited his next door neighbor to score this (as well as Death Wish 3), that neighbor – Jimmy Page. This was Page’s first post Led Zeppelin outing. There is fairly typical orchestral incidental music, but where the score really shines are the proto-electro-clash coked out guitar rockers. Imagine Physical Graffiti-era Zeppelin playing Daft Punk and you're in the neighborhood. I don’t recall vocals in the movie versions of the songs, but some of the songs on the soundtrack album like, “Who’s to Blame” have a ridiculously cheesy Bobby Womack impersonator howling over the synths and guitar wanking. It’s kind of amazing.
Thematically, the movie doesn’t do anything majorly different from the first outing. The questions are the same and so are the answers. The movie does begin to add some ludicrousness into the series. For one, this was shot 8 years after the original; Charles Bronson was well into his 60’s at this time. The nuance is turned down almost all the way. The kills are bigger and gorier. The climactic scene is quite good and actually manages to build a little bit of suspense. Bronson drops all pacifist pretense in this one. Death Wish II is worth watching, but is in my opinion the least essential movie in the series because it is basically just a rehash.
Death Wish 3
With Death Wish 3, the crazy gets turned up to 11. It seriously doesn’t make any sense in the context of the series, but it is absolutely incredible. If the previous Death Wish movies were a sane person’s revenge fantasies, then Death Wish 3 is that person's make-a-wish PCP induced fever dream.
The movie starts innocently enough. Paul rolls back into New York City on a bus to visit his old Korean War buddy who lives in an old building in a really bad part of town. Imagine the place where the big gang summit was in The Warriors. Just before Paul gets there, his friend is killed by a gang. (editor's note: This friend is a man. He is also not raped. Just had to make that clear. - Miranda ) Paul ends up walking in right as he dies, so naturally the police pin the murder on him. After a few ridiculous scenes at the police station, Paul finds out that the chief knows Paul's vigilante reputation. The chief gives Paul license to kill all the punks he wants to. Seriously.
Kersey doesn’t waste much time. He gets to know the other tenants: a WWII vet, an old Jewish couple, and a young Puerto Rican couple. Paul goes out and buys a nice car to leave out front as bait so he has an excuse to shoot people. Later on he walks around with a nice camera and a fudgesicle just waiting for someone to try to mess with him so he can blow their brains out. He rigs some makeshift home security devices that can only be described as Home Alone meets Paladin Press. The other tenants start reveal that they've bought into his crazy law of the jungle kill-or-be-killed mentality as they get more and more violent.
In the end this escalates into an all out war. There are machine guns, RPGs, Molotov cocktails, grenades, motorcycles, and all the other implements of destruction you’d expect. This makes First Blood look rational. Whereas I would consider the first two movies to be mostly plausible street-level fare, this is bonkers. Aside from being criminally entertaining, it actually kind of makes sense. Director Michael Winner pushes the vigilante gun-loving mentality to its logical and absurd conclusion. It's an arms race between punks and their victims. Granted, this thought is in opposition to the simple "might makes right" message of the other movies.
Here's a perfect example of a Pyrrhic victory for you. After the huge battle scene takes place, the building that Charles Bronson fought so hard to protect is leveled by his own hand and the whole neighborhood is made to look like post-war Europe . Death Wish 3 is definitely the most fun of the Death Wish movies. It is the most highly recommended, but I would urge anyone who wants to see it to watch either Death Wish or Death Wish II first just to appreciate how crazy of a jump it was to Death Wish 3.
Tomorrow I'll be wrapping up my look at the Death Wish series with Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and Death Wish V: The Face of Death.