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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie Oleson" data-source="post: 383363" data-attributes="member: 8">DEATH WISH (1974)[ATTACH=full]49945[/ATTACH]Found this in an online list of Underrated or Forgotten Gems and apparently it's also considered a cult classic. I know that "cult classic" doesn't say anything about the quality of the film but they usually have something...something...well, something.After I had ploughed through the 93 minutes of this film (which felt like 4 hours) I returned to Mother Internet to find out what it was that made this film a cult hit.No explanations are given but I did learn that Death Wish was originally to be directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Jack Lemmon and Henry Fonda - and then it's easy to imagine what this film could have been.And perhaps we did get that film in 1993, with Michael Douglas starring in FALLING DOWN.The problem with the casting in Death Wish is that they want me to forget that Charles Bronson is Charles Bronson, only for a meagrest of meagre plotline allowing Charles Bronson to become  Charles Bronson. Except that that also doesn't happen.So, without the psychological angle that should-have-been, and without the entertaining violence that could-have-been, this film really has nothing to offer.The dialogue is either bad or badly delivered, by all the actors, but Steven Keats gets the worst parts.He plays Charles Bronson's son-in-law and he calls Charles Bronson "dad" in almost every line he speaks. I found it massively cringey.In order to get the point across we see attempted robbery on Charles Bronson's character four times, and always in a seemingly desolated New York but it's a story so don't mind some contrivances if it advances the plot.There is nothing authentic about any of these muggers or the way they orchestrate their muggery, but since they occasionally do point a gun at Charles Bronson and he just happens to shoot first it kinda looks like self-defence instead of vigilantism.Maybe I'm supposed to understand that he's posing as an easy target in order to attract muggers in order to kill them (would I consider Charles Bronson an easy target? hm....) and that he can always choose a moment when no other New Yorker is in sight, but this character's state of mind is too blank to read anything into it.Then the cops find out who's behind the killings of these criminal people - let's try a bit of ZODIAC - and they want him to get away/not get away with it because...it helped...or shouldn't....something.The chase makes no sense whatsoever and when someone requires information it's usually "not much"."Not much" can also mean that they know every detail but the film's suspense requires that they won't reveal that information immediately.What time is it?-Not much.Death Wish (and it takes a lot of imagination to figure out how the title applies to this film) fails in every single aspect. It isn't even entertainingly awful therefore it puzzles me why this is considered a Cult Classic.What do you think?Not much.</blockquote>

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