Linda Blair cleaning up the streets

Savage Streets (1984)

This movie borrows quite heavily from Death Wish (1974) and others of it's kind, though this time Charles Bronson is replaced by the young Linda Blair. Se plays Brenda who with her friends ends up pissing off a group of drug dealing gang members. The gang then rapes Brenda's sister and kill her best friend as a revenge. Brenda decides to take the law into her own hands and deal out some justice with a crossbow. This movie is simply fun, it's clearly made with a tongue in cheek attitude with plenty of violence and nudity, not forgetting the great one liners in true 80's action movie style. Add to that a brilliant 80's soundtrack and a plot which is just hilarious in stupidity and you have an entertaining movie. Surprisingly enough there are quite a few good performances in this one, John Vernon as the principal was great as was Robert Dryer as Jake, the leader of the gang. And I must say I also enjoyed Linda Blair giving these great one liners before dealing some violent justice, even though her performance otherwise wasn't that great. Rest of the cast were from ok to rather bad. But they fit their silly roles anyway so it didn't matter that much. This is one of those great movies to get over a hangover morning or some night with friends drinking to get one.
80%

Bronson cleaning the streets

I read the book Bronson's Loose!: The Making of the Death Wish Films and that inspired me to watch the movies again. The book itself was quite ok, it loses track more than once as it's based on so many different interviews, but yet it manages to dig up enough great info to keep it interesting. Too bad it's quite short as I ended up reading it quite fast and it left me wanting more of it. But it's great for what it is and definitely great read for anyone into the Death Wish movies. Anyway, here's what I thought of the movies.



Death Wish (1974)

The movie which kick-started the vigilante genre watched today seems a bit corny and superficial at parts. But it still has a whole lot to offer and the importance of it can't be denied. Paul Kersey, the vigilante, is definitely Charles Bronson's most iconic character. I bet pretty much everyone has seen at least one of the movies from the series or at least some of the iconic pictures of them. In this first movie his wife is killed and his daughter is raped by punks who invade their home. The daughter gets traumatized and loses the ability to speak. Kersey doesn't jump to a gun straight away to seek revenge, at start it looks like he doesn't want anything to do with the mess. Only the growing violence around the neighborhood and the incompetence of the police drives him to arm himself for defense. As he first time needs to defend himself against a mugger, he gets a whole new sensation in form of an adrenaline rush. He notices that the criminals can be dealt with and so he decides to go and hunt them down. So there is a bit of depth to the story as well and it surely is quite striking even today at some parts. The cast is quite great and the look of the movie is nicely gritty. The city looks menacing and the dark alleyways hold all sorts of low life criminals. Sure it's totally over the top, but this movie is not about subtlety, it's about extremes. Despite it's few corny moments it's still a strong movie, even today and definitely deserves it's spot among the best of it's genre.
89%



Death Wish II (1982)

This time Paul Kersey lives in Los Angeles with his still traumatized daughter and his new girlfriend. One day five thugs break into his house raping and killing his housekeeper. When he gets home they knock him out and kidnap her daughter. The daughter gets also raped and killed, so Kersey is out for blood once again. This movie doesn't seek motives too far and jumps quite fast into the main point, termination of the criminals. This one is a lot more brutal than the first one and also a lot more straight forward without much thought to the dilemmas of the subject. So the entertainment values are more on the action exploitation side and that's not at all bad as this is quite entertaining movie. The acting is quite bad and even unintentionally funny at parts. The dialog is very corny, though there's not that much of it anyways. This movie made the character a bit more like a hero and opened the road for the absolutely crazy third part, but more about that below. In the eyes of an exploitation movie fan this kind of cut out all the nonsense of the idea and focused on the juicy parts. Far behind the first one in content and depth, but still surprisingly enjoyable no brainer action flick.
66%



Death Wish 3 (1985)

Over the top would be a horrible understatement about where the third part took the series. It's absolutely bonkers. This time Kersey doesn't even have to lose a family member, the death of a Korean War buddy is enough to set him on a rampage again. And this time he just doesn't shoot a few muggers with a puny pistol, he has a 60 caliber machine gun, a hand cannon even Dirty Harry would be jealous and a fucking rocket laucher to boost. The story is basicly that this small part of the city is over run by a gang, they terrorize the elderly people living there and the police is helpless. So what does the police do? They of course ask Kersey to help them out. And a total all out war is the name of the game. So the script is ridiculous to say the least, the acting is quite bad most of the time and the movie is tons of fun. The camp values of this one are extremely high. As a serious movie this is total crap, but as an insane campy fun ride this is the best of the series. And since I love a good campy movie, that's how I'm going to rate it. Absolutely brain numbingly brilliant!
92%



Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

So after the completely insane third part, where could the series possibly go? Well the start of the fourth part is quite brilliant, kind of like making the Kersey character a super hero, avenger in the shadows rescuing the damsel in distress. But unfortunately that was just a dream and the reality is not really what you'd hope for. Kersey has given up his vigilantism and is trying to settle down with his girlfriend, but him being Kersey, things don't work out as planned. The daughter of his girlfriend overdoses on crack and dies. A wealthy business mogul whose daughter has also died of drugs hires him to kill the mafia behind the drug traffic. With a bit of moral support he soon accepts the deal and on we go. So this time the small time criminals and muggers are switched to mafia men in suits. That's the biggest problem in this movie, it's not as interesting to see him as a hitman without the revenge theme, sure it was thin on the third already but still, kind of taking the vigilante theme in the wrong direction. And speaking of direction, Michael Winner who directed the first three didn't return and J. Lee Thompson took over. That unfortunately shows as this movie was surprisingly straight forward with only a few nice looking scenes. Not that the previous 3 would have been especially stylish but they had that gritty exploitative feel to them, this one looked like a James Bond movie done cheap with all it's clean action. Sure there's a big bodycount like in the previous one, but this time it's quite unimaginative and the movie is trying to take itself a bit too seriously in the light of the thin script it has. Despite the few good moments, got quite bored watching this.
44%



Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994)

After a wife, a daughter, two girlfriends, a step daughter and a Korean War buddy being killed, you'd think Paul Kersey wouldn't want any friends and family. Add to that the fact that most of his friends and whoever he comes close to end up getting hurt also, you just wonder why he even bothers to trying to live a normal life. Should just stick to cleaning the streets. Well quess he's after the nookie or something as this time around he's again in a relationship and as soon as he proposes things end up bad for the woman. What a surprise... Again he's after the organized crime but this time even the action is very poor. So this final part has really nothing to give to the series and is quite a pointless sequel. Even Bronson mostly just looks tired and you can see that he's thinking "I'm too old for this shit". And at the age of 72 he sure was. They should have let the series die at the third part or even at the fourth part as that still had it's moments. This one has none.
18%

Vigilante old farts

Bought Harry Brown (2009) from a discount bin of a record store and even though I just saw it earlier this year I gave it another watch. But as I can't stop comparing it to another movie with similar themes that came out not long before it, so here's the review of Gran Torino (2008) also. Lets start with the one that came out first.



Gran Torino (2008)

Vigilante movies are quite a drained subject, so wasn't expecting much from this when I first saw it. Well little did I know what the old man Eastwood had in store for me. This movie took the old vigilante story, treated it with a good taste and made it almost seem fresh. Entertaining throughout and probably the best ending I've seen in these kind of movies. I've seen this now couple of times and still can't find anything bad to say about it. It struck me like a freight train and went straight to my favorite movies. One of the best movies of 2008 and an instant classic.
98%



Harry Brown (2009)

Similar in themes as Gran Torino, an old man gets tired of the gangs terrorizing the neighborhood and takes revenge. But where Gran Torino had some comedy in it also, this one doesn't have one bit. It's grim to the bone and the situation is quite helpless without any glimpse of hope. At start that works great, the violence really hurts and the gang members are truly frightening. All in all the cast is quite brilliant and the acting is this movie's strong part, much thanks to Michael Caine. About two thirds into the movie I was quite surprised how good it was, kind of like Gran Torino's grim evil brother. But unfortunately then things go wrong. The ending is quite bad and it loses the gritty realistic feel that was the driving force of the movie. Well worth watching, but still the ending is a bit too idiotic to make this a great movie.
70%

Death sentence to bad movies

Death Sentence (2007)

Death Wish of the modern day, that's what I've heard of this movie and as Death Wish is quite a good movie, I was somewhat excited to see this one. Well, it turned out to be quite a bad movie. The story is the same age old story which has been told a million times already, but that was ok, what would you really expect from a movie like this. The dialog was horrible, paper thin without any effort. The action was at some points way over the top which didn't fit the mood, for example the parking lot end fight. Then again at some points it was quite good too with some really brutal and realistic scenes. Too bad they were few and far apart because those kinds of scenes you would have wanted to see more, not some ramboing. Kevin Bacon does a great job as the avenging father and is one of the only strong points this movie has. Also John Goodman was a nice surprise, but the rest are just there not making too much of an impression. The directing was focusing on the action too much and except for a few scenes didn't really get much out of the story. I'm beginning to feel like every time I see Saw mentioned in the promotion of a movie, I should run away from it. All in all waste of money and time, it offers nothing that hasn't been done better before. Only reason I could think for anyone to watch this would be Kevin Bacon's performance.
35%