Review of Death Wish II (1982) by Shifty R — 26 Mar 2005

Y'know, after seeing a few films made about gangs from the late '70s and early '80s, there's one thing I've noticed. Sure, they're vicious and evil, stealing everything in their path that isn't nailed down and nailing everyone in their path that is, but for a gang of hooligans, they're pretty accepting folks.

In all the gang related films I've watched as of late, [i]Death Wish 2 & 3[/i], [i]The Warriors[/i] and [i]Tenement[/i], the gangs were racially pretty mixed. Black gang members and white gang members took turns raping and murdering, and everyone was good at their assigned jobs, whether it be standing around and giving orders, shooting up dope in alleys or going into giggling fits as the group's token crazy person. To these gangs, it didn't matter if you were black or white. As long as you were a crazy, deranged, psychotic asshole, you were in. It's a beautiful thing.

The gang of multi-culture pals in [i]Death Wish II[/i] incurs the wrath of architect Paul Kersey, played for the second of five times by Charles Bronson's hair. Kersey has left New York after the first film to Los Angeles, the idea apparently being that Los Angeles is an infinitely safer place than New York. He's not in town more than a few months, however, when his home is broken into, his housekeeper is raped and murdered and his mute daughter is kidnapped. Because that's apparently not enough, the daughter is then raped and attempts escape, only to jump out of a two-story window and get impaled on a fence post.

It's a bad day all around, but at least Paul still his his sexy blonde love interest Geri, played by Bronson's real-life wife, Jill Ireland. The police don't do anything, mostly because Paul's memory is uselss and they don't have the random luck that Paul has of being able to coincidentally run into every member of the gang while just wandering down the street.

Then he kills them. But you probably guessed that.

While never achieving the heights of silliness of the later Death Wish entries, [i]Death Wish II[/i] still rates as a fair entry into the field of "male camp," with Bronson curling up his sheer manliness into a ball so tight you can practically see his sphincter shrink. (Thankfully, you don't.) His rugged tough-guy attitude is magnified with a hilariously awful score by Jimmy Page (!), that manages to turn every little thing Bronson does into THE MOST DRAMATIC MOMENT EVER PRESENTED by the sheer force of loud "ka-RRRRRNGG" sounds.

Bronson chops wood! ka-RRRRRRNG! Bronson spots a glass unicorn! ka-RRRRRRNG! Bronson uses white-out! KKKKAAAAA-RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNG!*.

It's pretty amazing stuff, and you may want to clean out your VCR afterward just to make sure it's clear of testosterone.

Meanwhile, New York cop Vincent Gardenia (from the first film) tracks him down because Paul's vigilance might make the NYPD look bad, a dumb plotline that Gardenia manages to carry out fine. Of course, he ends up on the wrong end of a bullet, thus proving that nobody should ever, ever, ever, get anywhere close to Paul Kersey at any time, a theme carried out over the rest of the series as well. Geri proves to be the smartest character in the entire franchise by getting the hell out of the relationship before she raped, shot, stabbed, blown up in a car or made to overdose on heroin, like anyone else Paul knows.

The fascist nature of the series is there, what with a government official decrying the death penalty in a scene we're obviously supposed to be sneering at, though it's not nearly as ham-fisted as [i]Death Wish 4: The Crackdown[/i], which may be the most Reagan-era piece of filmmaking ever made. Director Michael Winner again proves that he's just to the right of, say, G. Gordon Liddy, and the fact that this series managed to get five features out of it kind of proves that the left doesn't have a monopoly on Hollywood crap.

It's entertainingly sadistic drive-in sleaze, and if you can make it past the first twenty minutes of tough rape and murder, you can kick back and enjoy some prime hypermanly goofiness. Laurence Fishburne shows up as a gang member who manages to get shot in the face through a boombox, and there's a nifty moment where Paul asks a gang member if he believes in god. When the member says "Yes," Paul replies, "You're going to meet him" and shoots him, thus providing evidence that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were big Bronson fans. Who can blame 'em?

[size=1]* -- I'm serious about this bit. The film actually tries to make an important, intense moment from [i]Charles Bronson using white-out[/i]. Mrs. Nesmith would be proud.[/size].