Is he a hero here, Paul Kersey, are we meant to think he was in the right?
Cheers thanks.
shareConsidering how the system is portrayed in the movie and how both his wife and daughter are murdered and raped, then YES..
shareBut did those muggers and all deserve to die, was he right to administer his own form of vigilante justice?
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Legally, no, he wasn't right. Vigilante justice is just plain wrong and there are excellent laws in place to prevent this kangaroo court solution.
But, this movie fulfills the fantasy of those who have witnessed (some directly) violence by perps who have escaped justice or at least have read about it and been frustrated by what seems to be an impotent justice system. Watching this man kill those who deserved to die by the violence and misery they bring to people who didn't deserve it is immensely satisfying. That's why this movie resonated so well.
For more on this difficult subject matter, from the same director, I recommend the excellent "Lawman" (1971), starring Burt Lancaster in a fantastic proto-RoboCop zealot super law enforcer turn. The ending is one of the most incredible, ballsiest thing ever commited to film.
share"The ending is one of the most incredible, ballsiest thing ever commited to film."
Wonder what exactly it could be without spoiling it? Maybe a sub Wild Bunch-type of Sam Peckinpah-esque bloodshed stylishly filmed?
How smug and presumptuous. You should just watch the movie. Lawman is excellent.
shareMy good Man18, there's absolutely no question that Michael Winner's 'Lawman' isn't playing in the same league as 'The Wild Bunch', nor that its ending is as aesthetically significant as that of Peckinpah's masterpiece, but it packs a different kind of punch altogether and very few films dare go where it goes.
Without spoiling it, I'd says that in the last few minutes of the film it suddenly shines a very different light on a character and opens up the film to a much more complex interpretation, while producing an interesting critique of what vigilantism or cold-hard-justice-that-never-blinks does to the human psyche (incidentally, it also helps get a better understanding of what the director is trying to say in 'Death Wish', 3 years later).
It's also probably the bleakest, no-compromise sequence in any western this side of Robert Aldrich's 'Ulzana's Raid' (also with Burt Lancaster) where...
(SPOILERS !)
...a man shoots a woman and her kid in the head to spare them the fate of being captured by Apaches, then shoots himself in the mouth so he won't feel the "open-heart surgery" performed on him by said Apaches.
Just one correction: The soldier shoots the woman but not the kid. In fact, the kid survives the encounter because the Apaches are impressed with his bravery when he shoves them away from his mother and prevents them from mutilating her corpse.
shareYes and if you sometime down the road see DEATH WISH II, you'll see vigilante justice at it's grittiest
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