We're in the early eighties now and it still feel like it's 1973.
I have no idea why they waited so long to make another film.
Perhaps Bronson couldn't be bothered. Maybe he needed the paycheck in the 80s, who's to say.
Charles Bronson's character really can't get a break can he.
After all the trauma of New York, he moves out to California, finds a nice new lady to hook up with. Lives in a really nice home, has a decent job at a radio station. He even brought his daughter along from the mental institution. She's been slowly but surely recuperating and has even begun talking again.
Or at least so the film says.
I don't think she says a single word in the entire movie.
Anyways none of that matters.
His daughter from the last film and his housemate are just victims who need to be needlessly thrown around, brutalize, raped and murdered. All so Charles Bronson's character (Paul) has an excuse to go on yet another Rampage.
A rampage that doesn't make any sense. In the first Death-Wish it was made really clear that finding the culprits who murdered and molested his family was borderline impossible. Made all the more probable because his daughter refused to do any identification.
She's simply couldn't put up with the trauma again.
And Paul's eventual turn to vigilante was more of a coping mechanism than anything else.
A Broken Man lashing out against the world in a vain attempt to make things better.
It put the fear of God into a couple of criminals and made the police reluctant to hunt him down.
But it didn't solve any of his problems.
His wife never coming back, his daughter still traumatized and he never gets his revenge on the people who actually did it*.
It's just a movie about a broken system filled with broken people.
But Death Wish 2 completely disregards all of that.
Paul is taking revenge on the thugs who went after his family. He finds them with moderate ease. He takes them out one by one and it completely disregards what the first film was about. It's made all the worse when you consider that if he had taken the time to identify these men with the police (who were willing to help them at that point) they might have arrested and charged the thugs for their crimes.
Would this have fixed pause problems all together?
Well of course not.
But it would have been better than the alternative that happened.
Paul's actions lead to the death of the very detective who saved his ass in the first movie.
Who was played buy Vincent Gardenia. Subsequently he's the best part of Death Wish 2 and I wish the entire movie revolved around him.
In fact I think that would have made for a far better film overall.
Alternative plot:
The NYPD finds out that Paul's on another Rampage after his family was yet again ripped apart.
The police knowing that if the media gets hold of this story can lead it all right back to New York and how a police department purposely let a vigilante man go.
To save their own police force the trouble of dealing with the criminal out lash.
So they send the detective who detained him from the first movie out to California to try and recapture him all over again.
Only we never spend any time with Paul we stick with the detective the whole way through and we watch him slowly but surely track this psychopath down.
Following a trail of bodies and despair while also keeping some of his actions secret from the L.A. Police Department as to not raise suspicion back to New York.
You can make a whole tightrope drama out of this. A police Lt. who is way beyond his prime trying his best to hunt down a guy while using his little help as possible from the local police force.
And at the end he could still die trying to do what he thinks is right. Even trying to save Paul's life from a sniper he hadn't noticed.
But instead we just got a rehash of the first Death Wish movie with little to no character development. Absolutely no morals and extremely exploitive rape sex.
It's just tasteless in a lot of ways and it could have been a lot better.
Is Death Wish 2 the worst thing out there?
No.
There's parts of it that are fine. The shootouts between Paul and all the thugs can be kind of entertaining and there's a part later on where Paul pretends to be a doctor to get into a psychiatric ward to kill the last guy that he couldn't take down initially.
But it's just missed opportunity at the end of the day.
And it's just a really sleazy film. Especially with what happens with Paul's daughter, that's just a vulgar.
*In fairness I might be misremembering the first Death Wish. It's possible the last three thugs he took out at the end of that movie were the original guys who molested his family but I can't honestly remember. Especially because there's a scene in Death Wish 2 towards the end or I think you see the same three thugs again walking across the street and almost having an introduction with Paul's kind of indicating that after all this time these three guys are still wandering around and Paul is none the wiser. But I could be completely wrong on all of this.
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