At least from the standpoint of being taken seriously as an actor and not being typecast as a tough-guy vigilante?
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22344444&postcount=94
He was old by then , he'd already had his career
shareIt actually finally lead to superstardom for Bronson in the United States. He had actually been a huge star in Europe since 1968, but it wasn't until Death Wish in 1974 that he became a true superstar. He did enjoy about three or four years of being a major leading man and star in America (between 1974 and 1977). The trouble for Bronson was by 1977 he was in his mid-50s, and once that brief resurgence petered out he was pretty much left with the choice between doing low-budget rehashes of his past hits for Canon Films or attempting to transition to being a character actor. The trouble is, Bronson was seen by most people as "Stone Face" Bronson - an action star - and it would have been hard for him to get parts as just a regular guy (even though he was capable of doing so as an actor).
shareNot at all. If anything I'd say it triggered a resurgence in his career.
shareHe was the most part typecast in tough guy roles before it.
shareNo it's probably the movie he's the most well known for it's like his Dirty Harry.
shareLet’s be honest. Few people would know of Bronson without Death Wish.
Sure, he had a great career. But most of those films are barely remembered. The few that could be considered classics like The Great Escape are known for other actors, not him.
It’s the same thing with Alec Guinness. He was a great actor who also had a great career. But it was his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi that most people remember him for.
“Few people would know of Bronson without Death Wish.”
Many do associate him with that film and it did spawn a genre that lasted for years to come, but he was immensely popular in Europe after Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
I don't think so. It is true that the movies he made from the eighties on were never anywhere near as good as his films from earlier in his career, like "The Mechanic," or "Mr. Majestyk," or this one. From the eighties onward, he was pretty well typecast as a tough-guy action hero in frankly pretty schlocky B grade movies, which all of the Death Wish sequels were, as well as his other films from that period. He was a tough guy action star in his earlier films too, to be sure, but the films were better, and not all B movie quality like his films toward the end of his career. But if any movie were responsible for that, I'd put the blame on "Death Wish II" rather than this film, because it changed the fundamental nature of the series (which hadn't originally been meant to be a franchise). This movie was a grim, sobering look at out of control crime and how it could push a man over the edge -- and that also had something to suggest to viewers about what might be wrong with a society where things had been allowed to get so bad that audiences might cheer for a man who takes the law into his own hands and acts as judge, jury, and executioner. The sequels were all B grade, mindless action films where Kersey could run around in public machine-gunning gangs or blowing people up with explosives and so on. Even the non-Death Wish films Bronson made after that were films of similar quality.
But he was getting up there in years, and was probably happy enough to keep working and making money, even if his best work was years behind him.
At least he did not go hungry making sequels.
shareHe was a character actor. Yes, the franchise put him in a box.
share