DEATH WISH: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Paramount, 1974) Kino Lorber

I’ll be honest here. I have never understood the appeal of director, Michael Winner’s Death Wish (1974) or the subsequent movie franchise it spawned. Fair enough, it was the seventies – a decade known for low cinema attendance and a certain ‘on the fly’ grit and humorless social commentary about the virtues of vigilante justice. Lest we remember, this is the age of Shaft, Dirty Harry and, in this film, architect, Paul Kersey (accountant, Paul Benjamin in the book, herein recast as a rumpled Charles Bronson, looking like at least eight miles of bad road, ridden hard, wet and hung up to drip dry, in a role originally envisioned for Jack Lemmon).  Even without the preamble of his wife and daughter being savagely brutalized, the victims of a gruesome home invasion, it is virtually impossible to picture Bronson’s Paul as a fun-loving, yuppie-class, family man. Wendell Mayes’ screenplay is cribbing from Brian Garfield’s 1972 novel, ironically to denounce vigilantism almost as vehemently as this movie embraces it.

It should be noted, Garfield was actually the victim of two crimes against his family – the first, having his wife’s purse stolen, the second, his car vandalized. Garfield’s initial, and primitive inclination to avenge these crimes by killing the perpetrator became the crux for his writing Death Wish. Having come to his senses, Garfield reasoned, what if the virtuous fellow put upon by criminals never awoke from this first flourish of seething rage. Death Wish received some pretty solid literary reviews when it was first published, though it was hardly a bestseller or book of the month club pick for obvious reasons. So, Garfield sold the rights to his novel, and another – Relentless - to producers, Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts. Offered the opportunity to write one of the two screenplays, Garfield chose Relentless as he believed it was the easier to adapt into a movie. So, Wendell Mayes came aboard to rework Death Wish, maintaining the novel’s basic structure and some of its philosophical debate, while padding out the role of Police Detective, Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia, in a role originally intended for Henry Fonda). In the original ending to this movie, Ochoa comes across Paul’s murdered remains and his weapon, contemplating what to do next. This was later altered to Paul sustaining superficial wounds and being rushed to hospital, while Ochoa struggles with his decision what to do with the discovery of Paul’s weapon at the scene of the crime.

Almost from the outset, Death Wish ran into production glitches. Its original director, Sidney Lumet, bowed out to do Serpico (1973), with subsequent choice, Peter Medak fervently campaigning for Henry Fonda to be cast as Paul. United Artists (UA) chose Michael Winner as Lumet’s replacement, as he understood the sort of stark, cruel realism of its subject matter, having previously made The Mechanic (1972), Scorpio (1973), and The Stone Killer (1973).  Despite its cult status today, Death Wish was not a sought-after property at the time and potential stars, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Burt Lancaster, George C. Scott, Frank Sinatra, Lee Marvin and even Elvis Presley all turned down the starring role. Winner tried for Bronson, against his agent, Paul Kohner’s strenuous objections. In the novel, Paul is described as a meek accountant; Bronson, suggesting Dustin Hoffman would be perfect for the part. Winner also resisted casting Jill Ireland, Bronson's real wife, as his fictional counterpart’s ill-fated mate, due to the brutal nature of the assault that claims the fictional Joanna’s life. Bronson suggested Hope Lange. Winner concurred and Lange was cast in her stead. Interestingly, Ireland would resurface in Death Wish II – eight years later, as a love interest for Bronson’s anti-hero, in a picture of even more savage violence than its predecessor.

Regrettably, at this juncture, UA had second thoughts about Death wish, its budget constraints forcing Landers and Roberts to liquidate their rights. Indie producer, Dino De Laurentiis plugged the project to Charles Bluhdorn, president of Paramount Pictures, raising an additional $3 million to get the picture off the ground. Screenwriter, Gerald Wilson came in to beef up Paul as a tough guy. Wilson’s revisions cut hard into Mayes original draft, but also tightened the narrative considerably. Winner asked for, and was granted the opportunity to shoot a prologue showing Paul and Joanna as a happy couple in Hawaii. One of the picture’s highlights is the brutal murder of a mugger at the subway station, Winner relishing the opportunity to wallow in its uber viciousness. Initially, Bronson had been promised a California shoot to be near his family. Instead, Winner and De Laurentiis relocated the story to New York – then, in the throes of its own calamitous urban decay.  And although De Laurentiis believed Death Wish’s grit would best be served by an even grittier soundtrack from a ‘cheap’ English band, Winner convinced him to engage Grammy award-winning jazz musician, Herbie Hancock instead.

Death Wish opens with Paul Kersey as a prosperous Manhattan architect who lives in a fashionable apartment with his wife, Joanna. One day, Joanna and their married daughter, Carol (Kathleen Tolan) are followed from D'Agostino's by three ruthless criminals (Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Logan, and, Gregory Rozakis) who, upon confronting the women, only to discover they barely have seven-dollars between them, elect instead to brutally murder Joanna and rape Carol.  Paul is devastated to discover his wife has already succumbed to her injuries. Shortly after Joanna’s funeral, a grief-stricken Paul encounters a mugger (Robert Miano) against whom he defends himself with a homemade weapon. Startled by his newfound strength to withstand the assault, Paul is sent by his boss (Chris Gampel) to Tucson to engage a new client, Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin) for an upcoming architectural project. Ames invites Paul to the gun club and is extremely impressed with Paul’s marksmanship. Paul confides, he was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, serving as a combat medic. His tutelage in firearms came from his hunter-father, mortally wounded by another hunter after being mistaken for a deer. Afterward, Paul's mother made him swear never to use a gun. Paul’s architectural expertise is rewarded by Ames with a present he tucks into Paul’s carry-on luggage at the airport.

Arriving home, Paul is disturbed to learn from Carol’s husband, Jack (Steven Keats), she has withdrawn into a catatonic state. The men elect to institutionalize Carol for her own good. Meanwhile, Paul discovers Ames’ gift, a nickel-plated Colt Police Positive revolver and a box of ammunition. Bitter and vengeful, Paul loads the gun, then goes for a late-night stroll in the park where he encounters a mugger he fatally shoots. Afterward, Paul retreats home, where he becomes physically ill over his actions. Nevertheless, over the next few evenings, Paul repeats his modus operandi, challenging muggers to assault him before surprising them with his gun and killing them in cold blood.  Enter, NYPD Inspector Frank Ochoa who narrows down his search for the suspect in these vigilante murders to several men who recently lost a family member to street violence.  Ochoa is certain Paul is his man. Alas, D.A. Peters (Fred J. Scollay) orders Ochoa to stand down as Paul’s vigilantism has led to a significant decrease in violent street crimes. Fearing the populace of New York will begin to take matters into their own hands if they know about Paul, Peters suggests Ochoa scare Paul into relocating. Meanwhile, Paul is wounded by a mugger he attempts to kill in a warehouse. Discovering Paul’s pistol at the scene, Ochoa orders patrolman, Jackson Reilly (Christopher Guest) to forget about it. Later, Ochoa visits Paul in hospital as he is recovering from his wounds. Ochoa suggests a trade – he will dispose of Paul’s revolver if Paul agrees to leave Manhattan for good. Paul agrees, transferring for work to Chicago. Arriving at Union Station, Paul sees a young woman being taunted by a group of hoodlums. His peaceful intervention on her behalf is successful, making a finger-gesture to infer he has a gun.

Visually, as well as thematically, Death Wish is a pretty unattractive movie. Bronson plays Paul Kersey with a brooding blood-lust we are supposed to find, if not charming, then satisfactory in consequence for all the brutalities he and his family have endured. That would be true if Paul only went after the thugs responsible for his wife and daughter’s inhuman demise. But Paul doesn’t stop there. And thus, his whole ‘Superman with a gun’ complex is spawned, then spun off into a descending scale of attacks against criminals in general, assuming the position that criminal justice is never enough for those who disregard the law in the first place. Given the most recent suspension of justice in virtually all of the major metropolitan centers in the United States, dear ole Paul may have been on to something here. But Bronson’s Paul is not an avenging angel, so much as he becomes part of the very problem, he sought to fix in the first place.  The picture is all Bronson’s, and he chews up its scenery with a blood-soaking tirade that can come to no good. And, in an age where violence – both real and re-imagined for the screen – have gone off the proverbial rails, is it any wonder Death Wish plays like its own dull and demented hit and run today?

Death Wish hit theaters during a particularly brutal snap of cold weather in the U.S. The picture was not embraced by critics, nor by Garfield, who thought producers had completely missed the point in his prose – that violence is ‘never’ the answer. Even so, the picture nevertheless struck a chord with audiences at the time, fed up with rampant crime in their big cities. Death Wish was openly denounced for its violence, deemed gratuitous and despicable (hard to argue otherwise), rather than purposeful for the entertainment at hand. The killings are not purposefully staged, but rather exalted for their own sake, each with an increasing amount of bloodshed to ante up the grotesqueness in the exercise of murder for murder’s sake. There is no actual build-up to Paul’s avenging gunplay. He simply places himself in a target-rich environment, riddled by crime, and then embarks upon his own counterculture spree to butcher the brutalizers. Did it work back then? Actually, it did. Does it hold up under today’s scrutiny. Not so much.

Kino Lorber’s new 4K incarnation of Death Wish leaves much to be desired. It’s marginally better than the Blu-ray from a few years ago. Nothing here screams a 4K remaster from an original camera negative, the claim being made by both Kino and Paramount. Me thinks, somebody’s not telling the whole truth here. The Blu and the new to 4K have come from the same master. It’s decades old. Ironically, the Blu has better resolved grain. There’s been some odd digital scrubbing to the 4K. Grain just tends to disappear or get so homogenized in the ‘remastering’ process, it turns up as curious ‘noise’ in bright areas.  Honestly, viewing the Blu and the native 4K, the Blu just looks truer to the grittier textures of the movie.  One thing is for certain. Someone at Paramount decided to do a little creative ‘tinkering’ with the 4K scan (if, in fact, this is native 4K and not 2K up-rezed to 4K – which, after all, is pretty pointless!). Such massaging of the image results in a pretty abysmal compromise. Dolby Vision has slightly enriched the color spectrum. But otherwise, not much about this UHD transfer screams ‘buy me!’ Minor dirt and scratches, still imbedded – still visible.  Color density – fine, but nothing beyond 2K resolution. The image has marginal pop but still looks flat in projection. Paramount is holding to the idea this image harvest is native 4K. Again – not seeing it. And Paramount’s track record has been spotty at best. Perhaps, the source is the culprit. There are, in fact, inserts that appear as ‘dupes’. There is also a lot of image weave and wobble. This should not be if an OCN is mastered properly. Audio is 2.0 theatrical and 5.1 reimagined for home theaters. The latter sounds solid, with inherent limitations. We get a new audio commentary from historian, Paul Talbot, and interview with actor, John Herzfeld, TV and theatrical trailers and that’s about it. Bottom line: if you can’t already tell, I’m not a Death Wish fan. Be that as it may, this 4K release hasn’t improved my appreciation of the movie either. Not recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

2.5