The budget is shrinking, the actors are aging. The plot is downgraded significantly.
Sweet Jesus on the Potomac.
This is an incredibly stupid movie. Whatever realism the Death Wish franchise had is completely gone at this point.
Characterization?
Forget about it.
A coherent \ engaging plot.
No way Jose.
All we have to go on is Charles Bronson weak-willed Revenge fantasy to shoot a ridiculous amount of over-the-top thugs who make the thugs from the previous two movies look almost grounded by comparison.
I swear this is what The Warriors would have looks like if it was giving a lesser budget, Bad actors* and no real Direction.
It's just aimless.
Charles Bronson's character Paul is living in this crappy apartment building that is completely unlivable and unrealistic.
There's a bunch of supposedly average people sticking around the place trying to make ends meat. But it's just too crazy to take seriously.
Like this is borderline Mad Max territory. These people would have taken homelessness in their car or out to the middle of the country over trying live in this crap hole.
They're all extremely one-note characters with barely any personality to them. A few of them have something of a stereotype like the overly Orthodox Jewish couple or the stereotypically Hispanic couple.
And don't even get me started on the ''''romance''''
It's one of the most undeserved romances I've ever seen on film.
Paul gets arrested and ends up in jail for a couple of days with no chance of bail or a call from a lawyer. This one random lady (who I think is a reporter) finds out about this and tries to get the man set free because of the Injustice of his constitutional rights.
All she wants to know upon his release is where he's currently living so that she can put down something on the release forms.
Bronson doesn't give her the information and wanders off,
For some reason she decides the pursue this man. Mainly so she can try and Sue the police force on Paul's behalf.
Which he clearly doesn't want to do because of all the murders and vigilante crime behind him.
Also he has this weird sort of deal with the detective that let him out to begin with.
Where he just gets the right to kill random gang members whenever he wants.
It makes no sense and really has no payoff.
But anyways this woman doesn't know about any of that and wants to get in contact with Paul.
She's able to track him down by looking up the address of the apartment of which Paul was arrested at. As he was framed for the murder of his friend at the beginning of the film.
And for some ungodly reason she then asks him out on a date.
At first I thought this was a gimmick so she could learn more about him and discover his background or try to convince him on that original case to sue the police.
But no, she's romantically infatuated with him for some Oddball reason.
As if they had to write in a bad romance so she could die pointlessly later on to add to the Revenge fantasy.
And we don't need that in this movie.
Charles Bronson is already running around killing people. He doesn't need anymore of an excuse to do it . It makes her character all the more useless.
In fact I wouldn't even call her a character. She's a prod to be used and disposed when needed like so many over-the-top weapons.
And then we have to contend with the five minutes of ''romance'' dialogue that's pepper out the movie. Which is easily the most boring part of the entire thing. This would have been a great opportunity to give a little soul to our characters so that maybe we'd give a damn about them.
Instead it's just pushed to the wayside.
So we can have more boring action scenes they have no engagement to us the viewer as we have no engagement towards any of the characters.
And I'm sorry Paul but you've had two family tragedies involving brutal murders by the hands of clinically uneven individuals.
Going in for the '''romance''' with this random woman; especially when you know that you're being hunted by a gang of toughs that lives literally across the street from you. It's just negligent on your part. At this point in your life you have to contend with a sock, my friend.
That's the only romance your allowed.
And the thugs would probably find a way to murder that too.
All in all it's a very dumb and unfortunately doll movie.
It have some moments of action but with no investment of the characters and no flare in the gunfights. It's just not that interesting to watch.
At best this might serve well as a party film.
Get a group of friends together. Reminisce with each other about your lives and have this on in the background.
It might be able to fill in some dead air from time to time and you can have a bit of fun having a laugh at it when you're not engaged in conversation.
If nothing else it's a heck of a lot less creepy to watch than Death Wish 2.
At least this movie I would show at a party.
But really if you're just wanting to watch this type of film go find The Warriors. It does everything this movie does but fifty thousand times better.
Cool poster at least.
*I make fun of the actors a lot in this movie but really I don't hold it against them. There's not much any of these characters are given and I think the performances by most of the cast is just fine.
The thugs are having fun with it, the apartment tenants are doing their best with their nonexistent personalities.
Really the only person who's not all that good is Charles Branson himself.
There's just no energy here and he clearly can't do any of the running in stunt work anymore.
Not that I really could in the first movie either.
He was an overrated guy in the first film and now he's got to be bordering on 70. And he still got two movies to go!
At least they reference that his character was a conscientious objector to the Korean War. They completely forget that in Death Wish 2.
Comments
Post a Comment