Death Wish II (also known as Death Wish 2 in more recent years) was a 1982 sequel to the 1974 film Death Wish. The movie starred Charles Bronson, was written by David Engelbach, and was directed by Michael Winner. The soundtrack, also titled Death Wish II, was composed by Jimmy Page. The film was made on a $2 million budget; it profited $16 million domestically and $45 million worldwide, though critics panned it.
Death Wish II was released in the United States in February 1982. It was produced by exploitation giant Cannon Films, which had purchased rights to the Death Wish concept from Dino De Laurentiis. First planned for Cannon executive Menahem Golan to direct, Michael Winner eventually returned on Bronson's insistence.
The first Death Wish sequel makes a complete break from Death Wish and Death Sentence, Brian Garfield's novel series, and redefines the Paul Kersey character. Unlike in the original film, in which he hunts down every criminal he encounters, Kersey only pursues his family's attackers. He begins by renting an apartment in Los Angeles's Skid Row to use as a "headquarters" while he looks for his daughter's killers. Then he prowls back streets, video arcades, and local hangouts for the criminals. His weapon of choice is a Beretta Model 84 .380 ACP.
Plot
The film opens with a grand view of Los Angeles, with a news broadcast in the background detailing an increase in crime in the city. The overview of the city goes until the end of the opening credits where we zoom in on the new house of Paul Kersey where the maid, Rosario (Silvana Gallardo), is preparing dinner. He seems to have picked up the pieces of his life to move on, as his girlfriend is KABC news/radio reporter Geri Nichols (played by Bronson's real-life wife Jill Ireland) and they both go and pick up Carol from the hospital and spend the day with her. Paul talks to the doctor, who says that despite her traumatic catatonia, she has begun to speak again. Her husband, Jack Toby, though not seen or mentioned, presumably divorced Carol. Paul, Geri, and Carol spend the rest of the afternoon at a carnival, where Paul offers to buy ice cream while the girls look around. While waiting in line for some ice cream, he gets mugged and his dollar bill is stolen by five gang members. At first Paul does not mind but realizes they also took his wallet. Paul manages to catch up with one of them (Jiver), but Jiver exclaims that he was not the one who took the wallet.
Geri heads to do an interview with the senator while Carol and Paul go on a boat ride. The same five muggers who stole Kersey's wallet arrive at his house, tightly bind, and gag, and then rape Rosario. Paul arrives home with Carol, only to get beaten unconscious. Rosario tries to call the police, but the thugs hear the sound and quickly kill Rosario by bashing her head in. They then take Carol to their hideout, where one of the muggers rape her. After the attack, she runs away from the thugs and jumps from a window, becoming impaled on the railings below. Geri arrives to the house as Paul regains consciousness and the police arrive. Lt. Mankewicz (Ben Frank) is one of the first on the scene, asking Paul about the identification of the muggers because the description was "a little vague." A short time later, Paul learns about the death of his daughter and is sent to the station to ID her. Later on Mankewicz asks Paul to view some photos at the station to rejog his memory, to which Paul declines by saying "it won’t do any good."
The next scene is at a funeral where Paul and Geri both attend. That night, Paul pulls out his gun, changes clothing, and rents a low-rent apartment as his base of operations. The next night, he spots one of the muggers, Stomper, and follows him as a drug deal is about to be made. Kersey tries to be quiet as he can, but the others notice his presence when he knocks over a can. Kersey kills one of the men, then orders the other two out of the room where he kills Stomper.
The following evening as he is patrolling the streets, he hears a scream coming from a parking lot where a man and a woman are being assaulted by four muggers, one of the muggers is Jiver, whom Kersey chased down the alley the day of his daughter’s death. He kills two of them, but a third escapes. Jiver who is wounded but manages to get away. Paul follows the trail of blood, and manages to wound Jiver again before he kills him at a warehouse across the street. The L.A. police quickly hear about the muggings, as does the NY Police Department. Detective Frank Ochoa is called by the LAPD to help. The Commissioner thinks the vigilante killings may be done by Kersey again. Fearing that Kersey, when caught, will reveal that they let him go instead of prosecuting him, the NYPD sends Inspector Frank Ochoa to make sure that does not happen. Ochoa meets with Lt. Mankewicz, who suspects that Frank is hiding something.
That night, Ochoa breaks into Geri’s apartment tells her about Paul's past and recent vigilante spree. But when Geri confronts Paul, he denies it, ascribing the tale to Ochoa's imagination. Paul drives Geri to work the next morning, where Ochoa is waiting. In order to keep tabs on Paul, Ochoa calls Mankiewicz and asks him to park his car near Paul's apartment (but he doesn’t tell Mankiewicz about following Kersey himself). Ochoa follows Kersey to an abandoned park, where a major narcotics ring goes down - including three of the surviving five gang members: Cutter (Laurence Fishburne), Plunkett (E. Lamont Johnson), and Nirvana (Thomas F. Duffy). Ochoa sees Paul from a distance hiding in a bush, but decides to help Paul after detecting a spotlight heading in his direction. Ochoa warns Paul with a shot. Paul runs behind a tree as men grab their guns and fire back. Ochoa gets shot by a hail of gunfire, but Paul manages to kill Cutter (who vainly tries to shield his head with a boom box) with a bullet through the face and Plunkett. Paul also shoots and kills the getaway driver and seller of the firearms, who plummets off a cliff to a fiery doom below. The final mugger, Nirvana, gets away and later has a confrontation with police. Paul goes over to Ochoa and asks him why he saved his life. Ochoa says he had to side with Paul against the criminals, and tells Paul to kill Charles Wilson aka Nirvana for him. Ochoa dies as police arrive and Paul escapes into the night. The police get the name of Ochoa’s killer from a badly injured Plunkett by inflicting pain, who succumbs to his injuries and dies.
A few days later, Nirvana (who's real name is revealed to be Charles Wilson) is found by the police, TASERed with no effect due to an influence of PCP but is finally arrested after stabbing several officers, as Paul narrowly misses his opportunity for a kill when he gets slashed on the arm by Wilson during a chase. Tried and found criminally insane, Wilson is sent to McLarren State Hospital. Geri and Paul visit the hospital, allowing Paul to secretly steal a facility ID card. Despite his plans for revenge, Paul has lunch with Geri the next day and proposes to her. Geri accepts. That night, Paul uses his altered doctor ID to gain access to the hospital and confronts Wilson. They have a violent fight and Kersey is stabbed repeatedly by Wilson. But when Wilson slams Kersey up against an electrical device, Kersey ducks the oncoming punch. Wilson’s hand smashes through the machine and Kersey turns the power up, electrocuting Wilson. Donald Kay, the head orderly on duty, witnesses Wilson’s death, but sympathizes with Kersey and gives him three minutes to escape from the hospital before sounding the alarm.
Geri goes to his apartment later that night and finds the scanned copy of the stolen ID. She realizes that Paul is actually the vigilante after she hears a report of Wilson’s death on the radio. She puts the paper and the engagement ring on the table and drives off. Paul arrives home to an empty apartment after Geri drives away.
The ending of the movie is set a few months later has Paul speaking to the boss about a party in celebration of a new architectural design. His boss Elliott Cass (Michael Prince) invites him to a party and when Paul is asked if he's free, answers "What else would I be doing?" The movie ends with gunshots heard on skid row implying that Paul will continue his vigilante spree undisturbed.
Filming locations for Death Wish II
Cast
Score
Isaac Hayes was recommended along with the producers of the film to compose the score; however, Michael Winner chose former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page (who was Winner's neighbour at the time). The opening credits bear Page's signature guitar tone, along with the heavy reverb-laden drum sound that he used with Led Zeppelin. The film's soundtrack was released in February 1982.
Controversy and criticism
Death Wish II proved controversial even before it was released, with the British Board of Film Classification cutting over three minutes out of the notorious scene in which Bronson's home is invaded by a group of drugged-out hooligans who gang-rape his maid. The director, Michael Winner, was reportedly furious.[citation needed] Some of the cuts have been reinstated for the 2004 DVD release, but it remains significantly shorter than the uncut version. The full version has never been released on VHS/DVD in the UK, but was accidentally shown uncut several times by the satellite channel F/X in 2004. There appears to be no definitive (or director's) cut of the film, and Death Wish II seems to exist in numerous slightly different versions. These include:
- the original UK cinema/video versions which made use of tamer alternative/outtake footage to ease over the UK censorship cuts. These include a brief alternative shot of the bedroom rape of the maid (which masks female frontal nudity visible in the uncut version) as well as cutaways to Jiver and Nirvana waiting in the next room. Shots of the Maid being dragged by her hair, and Cutter’s “quietly do it nice” line, were substituted with a dialogue less close-up of Cutter. The shot used of the maid after she has been killed, is also different, having appeared to have been zoomed in on to mask full frontal nudity. This unique footage does not appear in any other version of the film apart from the UK video, it is absent from recent UK DVD release which was derived from the American R rated version of the film.
- a TV version shown on UK Bravo in the 1990s, in which shots in the living room part of the maid’s rape were filmed from angles to obscure any nudity (these were even tamer than the takes used in the UK video). This version also uses a different take of Nirvana’s line “if you want her take her in the bedroom”, which in this version is delivered in close-up and reduced to “take her in the bedroom”. This version is also shown on AMC in North America.
- a 1980s Greek video release, said to derive from an early work print of the film, which is uncut in terms of violence/nudity, but also includes several dialogue scenes not present in any other version of the film.
The film received far less respect from critics than did its predecessor; whereas Death Wish was hailed by film historian Leonard Maltin as "audience manipulation at its zenith," Maltin slammed the sequel as "made by profiteers, not moviemakers."[citation needed] Additionally, it's one of the movies Roger Ebert has even given a "zero stars" rating to.
References
External links
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The Death Wish Pentalogy |
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