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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2018
BRONSON - THE TRIPLE THREAT COLLECTION is a no-frills, 3-disc collection covering three of the five films in Charles Bronson's DEATH WISH series, which ran from 1974 - 1994. The films are DEATH WISH II, DEATH WISH III, and DEATH WISH IV: THE CRACKDOWN. What types of movies are these? Well, if you couldn't glean anything from their titles, let me begin with the immortal words of Bon Scott: "If you want blood, you got it."
The DEATH WISH series began in 1974 with Michael Winner's brutal, no-quarter drama about a pacifist named Paul Kersey, who had served as a medic in the Korean because he didn't want to take life, and then become an successful New York architect with a loving wife and beautiful daughter. When his wife was murdered, and his daughter raped and left catatonic, Kersey, unable to get satisfaction through the justice system, went on a brutal, capricious rampage on the streets of New York, mercilessly killing every mugger, rapist and thug he came across. Though identified by the police, he was let go due to the fact that crime rates plummeted out of fear of "the Vigilante." That is where the original, very serious film left off. And that is also where, for the most part, any sense of realism also left off. From then on out, the movies became increasingly violent and preposterous, with the moral issue of "what price vengeance" and so forth left out, and everything devoted to the idea that there is no criminal who can't be cured by a bullet between the eyes.
DEATH WISH II (1982) takes place 8 years after the original film. Kersey now lives in Los Angeles, is dating a beautiful news reporter (Jill Ireland) and nursing hopes that his still seriously troubled daughter Carol (Robin Sherwood) will fully recover from her trauma. Unfortunately for all involved, a nasty encounter with some street thugs turns ultra-violent when they raid Kersey's home, beat him unconscious, rape his maid to death and then kidnap and molest his daughter, who promptly commits suicide. I say "unfortunately for all involved" because Paul K. has no intent of letting it go at that. Taking a sleazy room downtown, he spends his nights hunting the thugs, which include Laurence Fishburne and the ubiquitous Kevin Major Howard, and killing them in brutally effective ways. Things get complicated when his old NYPD nemesis Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) shows up, and even more complicated when his woman Geri begins to suspect what he's up to, but there's no stopping The Vigilante when he's on a roll.
DEATH WISH III (1985) may rank as one of the most over-the-top action/crime movies ever shot. Abandoning any pretense whatsoever of realism, it reaches undreamed-of heights of massacre violence and features many terrific one-liners, some of them unintentionally hilarious. In this bloody opera, Paul Kersey is summoned to the Bronx by an old war buddy who is already dying when Paul arrives -- beaten to death by a local gang led by the hyper-vicious Mandy Fraker (Gavin O'Herlihy). Big mistake, Mandy! Chucky B, I mean Paul, is in no mood for the shenanigans of street thugs, and begins a systematic campaign of extermination which ultimately ends with him hauling a .30 belt-fed machine gun down the street and spraying death at everything that moves and much which does not. Interestingly, this cartoon of mayhem features a number of actors you'll know -- Ed Lauter, Marina Sirtis, Alex Winter and Martin Balsam. It also features the usual tragic fate of Chucky's unrealistically young love interest (LADIES: DO NOT DATE THIS MAN) and some wondrous lines like, "THEY KILLED THE GIGGLER, MAN!"
DEATH WISH IV: THE CRACKDOWN (1987) is a surprisingly good film hidden inside a predictably bad one. In this fourth installment, Chucky B, I mean Paul, is still living in Los Angeles and working as an architect, this time dating the somewhat unrealistically luscious Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz), who has a teenage daughter by a previous marriage. When Karen OD's on some bad coke, Chucky (oh to hell with it, I'm not even gonna bother calling him Paul anymore) casually murders the dealer who sold her the stuff. This act brings him into contact with wealthy magnate Nathan White (John P. Ryan), an anti-drug fanatic who offers to finance Chuck's vigilantism if he'll take on the two biggest drug families in L.A. and wipe them out. Chuck agrees, and via a series of surgical strikes pits the two families against each other, leading to the usual carnage. Actually, this movie is so completely by the numbers that even when the violence finally escalates to the levels established in III, it's a bit of a bore...until a massive plot twist in the final act pumps fresh life into its hardening arteries. Truth be told, there's some good stuff here amidst the tropes and cliches, including appearances by the veteran Ryan, Soon-Tek Oh, Danny Trejo and especially David Fonteno.
These discs are no-frills, and deliver exactly what you want and expect from the DEATH WISH series -- namely, terrible things happening to good people, and then terrible things happening to terrible people. They lack complexity or subtlety...or really anything but Chucky B simplifying the nation's crime problem by reducing the number of criminals as swiftly and entertainingly as possible, and they are light-years from the very serious moral quandary that was the original DEATH WISH, but hell, it works for me, and if you've read this far it will probably work for you.
The DEATH WISH series began in 1974 with Michael Winner's brutal, no-quarter drama about a pacifist named Paul Kersey, who had served as a medic in the Korean because he didn't want to take life, and then become an successful New York architect with a loving wife and beautiful daughter. When his wife was murdered, and his daughter raped and left catatonic, Kersey, unable to get satisfaction through the justice system, went on a brutal, capricious rampage on the streets of New York, mercilessly killing every mugger, rapist and thug he came across. Though identified by the police, he was let go due to the fact that crime rates plummeted out of fear of "the Vigilante." That is where the original, very serious film left off. And that is also where, for the most part, any sense of realism also left off. From then on out, the movies became increasingly violent and preposterous, with the moral issue of "what price vengeance" and so forth left out, and everything devoted to the idea that there is no criminal who can't be cured by a bullet between the eyes.
DEATH WISH II (1982) takes place 8 years after the original film. Kersey now lives in Los Angeles, is dating a beautiful news reporter (Jill Ireland) and nursing hopes that his still seriously troubled daughter Carol (Robin Sherwood) will fully recover from her trauma. Unfortunately for all involved, a nasty encounter with some street thugs turns ultra-violent when they raid Kersey's home, beat him unconscious, rape his maid to death and then kidnap and molest his daughter, who promptly commits suicide. I say "unfortunately for all involved" because Paul K. has no intent of letting it go at that. Taking a sleazy room downtown, he spends his nights hunting the thugs, which include Laurence Fishburne and the ubiquitous Kevin Major Howard, and killing them in brutally effective ways. Things get complicated when his old NYPD nemesis Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) shows up, and even more complicated when his woman Geri begins to suspect what he's up to, but there's no stopping The Vigilante when he's on a roll.
DEATH WISH III (1985) may rank as one of the most over-the-top action/crime movies ever shot. Abandoning any pretense whatsoever of realism, it reaches undreamed-of heights of massacre violence and features many terrific one-liners, some of them unintentionally hilarious. In this bloody opera, Paul Kersey is summoned to the Bronx by an old war buddy who is already dying when Paul arrives -- beaten to death by a local gang led by the hyper-vicious Mandy Fraker (Gavin O'Herlihy). Big mistake, Mandy! Chucky B, I mean Paul, is in no mood for the shenanigans of street thugs, and begins a systematic campaign of extermination which ultimately ends with him hauling a .30 belt-fed machine gun down the street and spraying death at everything that moves and much which does not. Interestingly, this cartoon of mayhem features a number of actors you'll know -- Ed Lauter, Marina Sirtis, Alex Winter and Martin Balsam. It also features the usual tragic fate of Chucky's unrealistically young love interest (LADIES: DO NOT DATE THIS MAN) and some wondrous lines like, "THEY KILLED THE GIGGLER, MAN!"
DEATH WISH IV: THE CRACKDOWN (1987) is a surprisingly good film hidden inside a predictably bad one. In this fourth installment, Chucky B, I mean Paul, is still living in Los Angeles and working as an architect, this time dating the somewhat unrealistically luscious Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz), who has a teenage daughter by a previous marriage. When Karen OD's on some bad coke, Chucky (oh to hell with it, I'm not even gonna bother calling him Paul anymore) casually murders the dealer who sold her the stuff. This act brings him into contact with wealthy magnate Nathan White (John P. Ryan), an anti-drug fanatic who offers to finance Chuck's vigilantism if he'll take on the two biggest drug families in L.A. and wipe them out. Chuck agrees, and via a series of surgical strikes pits the two families against each other, leading to the usual carnage. Actually, this movie is so completely by the numbers that even when the violence finally escalates to the levels established in III, it's a bit of a bore...until a massive plot twist in the final act pumps fresh life into its hardening arteries. Truth be told, there's some good stuff here amidst the tropes and cliches, including appearances by the veteran Ryan, Soon-Tek Oh, Danny Trejo and especially David Fonteno.
These discs are no-frills, and deliver exactly what you want and expect from the DEATH WISH series -- namely, terrible things happening to good people, and then terrible things happening to terrible people. They lack complexity or subtlety...or really anything but Chucky B simplifying the nation's crime problem by reducing the number of criminals as swiftly and entertainingly as possible, and they are light-years from the very serious moral quandary that was the original DEATH WISH, but hell, it works for me, and if you've read this far it will probably work for you.
