More than any other film, "Death Wish" cemented Bronson's screen persona for the remainder of his career. From here on out, the then 53-year-old actor almost exclusively played ordinary men driven to vigilante justice by acts of violence.
Directed by frequent collaborator Michael Winner, it stars Bronson as Paul Kersey, a New York architect whose liberal ideology is shattered when street punks break into his house, murder his wife (Hope Lang), and rape his teenage daughter (Kathleen Tolan). While on a business trip to Arizona, a client gifts him a .32 caliber revolver, and he starts patrolling the city streets at night, gunning down every criminal he meets. At a time when violent crime is running rampant, the public turns him into a folk hero.
It's that implied endorsement of vigilante justice that concerned critics, yet the film rests today with a 63% Rotten Tomatoes score. Roger Ebert called it "a quasifascist advertisement for urban vigilantes, done up in a slick and exciting action movie," adding "It's propaganda for private gun ownership and a call to vigilante justice." Ultimately, he admitted to liking the film despite being "turned off by its message." Other critics were less kind, particularly Vincent Canby of The New York Times, who called it "a despicable movie, one that raises complex questions in order to offer bigoted, frivolous, oversimplified answers."
It's certainly true that "Death Wish" can be seen as a glorification of right wing violence, coming at a time when Richard Nixon ascended to the White House on a campaign of "law and order," while films like "Dirty Harry," "The French Connection" and "Shaft" all featured heroes who skirted the law in order to enact justice. Those were all popular hits at the time, and so was "Death Wish," so much so that Bronson reprised the role in four sequels, each with increasingly lessened effect — and Eli Roth directed a 2018 remake with Bruce Willis.
While modern assessment requires a great deal of scrutiny, there's no denying the raw, visceral power of the film — as well as Bronson's career-defining performance.
