The first 'Death Wish' is definitely a misunderstood classic

The 1974 melodrama Death Wish is easy to dismiss and even easier to misunderstand. It can be, and often has been, read as purely a right wing screed, a massive overreaction to rising crime in urban eras during the decade in which it was released.

It is an extraordinary time capsule of New York City and its most foreboding, but I believe the film is more complex than just an endorsement of might-makes-right vigilantism.

The film stars a terrific Charles Bronson as a relatively mild mannered architectural designer, who is a liberal pacifist until his wife and daughter are brutally assaulted by thugs who break into his home while he is away at work.

Bronson, long one of my favorite action stars of all time, does so much with so little. No histrionics, no one liners, he's all slow burn here and his advanced age (he was a very fit 53 at the time) actually helps make him plausible as someone who could be perceived as a pushover.

Infamously he starts confronting would-be assailants on every street corner, but the movie is ambiguous about this -- is he seeking out criminals or are they chasing him? The film tries to sidestep the sticky racial problems this concept presents by casting a diverse away of creeps as bad guys (including a young Jeff Goldblum) but Bronson's character is clearly prejudiced, if not against any particular race, then against weakness and ineffectualness.

He chafes at the bureaucracy that makes it virtually impossible to find the men who victimized his family and in a deeply ironic twist -- those men are never actually penalized by the film. Essentially Bronson's taking out his fury on random people who simply represent his true enemies.

That said, there is an intentionally kinetic and cathartic charge in watching Bronson coldly dispatch the grimy hoodlums who confront him, which was probably why this film was such a breakout hit when it came out. Coming on the heels of Dirty Harry and The French Connection, the public was hungry for heroes who shot first and asked questions later.

Charles Bronson in Death Wish

But just as those film's protagonists were darker and more insidious than they initially appear, so is Bronson's Paul Kersey. As the film enters its third act it becomes increasingly a satire, with government officials looking to utilize the media frenzy around his actions for his benefit and a purposely unremarkable police investigator who is more comic relief than a real threat to Bronson.

It's the film's creepy funny ending -- and final eerie shot -- that make it more than just an amusing B-movie. I can't speak for the endless sequels, which I have yet to see. But the original Death Wish wants us to really consider its provocative premise.

There is a lot of dialogue about what is and isn't civilized, even in the opening scene. As Bronson and his wife snuggle on the beach, his character muses about how they used to be more reckless and uncivilized, even then the seed of a certain kind of madness and superiority is within him.

Bronson's character makes a conscious decision that he should determine who lives or dies -- and I find that fascinating. This is character who is a Korean War veteran who served as a conscientious objector. It's an absurd conceit on one level but also, if you buy into the horror he experiences, his descent could be viewed as an intriguing psychotic break.

You can watch Death Wish and just cheer on the killing of "bad guys" but you could also view Bronson as the "bad guy" -- and he is the creation of a world gone mad with violence. If you can get past some of the more dated elements (the audience I watched it with at a midnight showing couldn't help but snicker at some of the dialogue) and watch the film in that context, I think it can be considered a classic.