Death Wish V: The Face of Death
If anyone has ever seen a Charles Bronson movie, you pretty much know what to expect here. Pointless action and making guns look like useful tools in today's society. So how does this movie break from the trend of your average Charles Bronson movie...well...it doesn't! In fact, this movie may personify every movie Bronson has ever starred in. Here's what types of things you can expect to find here in this movie:
- Guns...lots of guns
- Creeps
- Bad Cops
- Spousal abuse
- Child Abuse
- A bad guy the law can't handle
- a Vigilantee or rogue of some sort.
This movie features recurring character, Paul Kersey (a reprised role by Bronson) as he is trying to settle down and form a new life as he has changed his name in order to cover up his past crimes and start a new life with new girlfriend, Olivia. At this point, I am wondering if Kersey has told this chick about the last four Death Wish movies in which his wife, daughter, girlfriend, other girlfriend, best friend and many others are killed by creeps and to get revenge, he kills all the creeps in return. Knowing that prior to the relationship would probably be very important seeing as how everyone around this guy gets killed, raped, or at least shot. Anyway, it turns out this girls husband is basically in charge of some sort of mafia like group that has dealings with...a modeling company?! Yeah, I think I might have missed something there in the plot.
Moving forward, in the first minutes of the film, we see what I guess is an accountant of some sort get yelled at by this boss and then get part of his stomach sawed...thats right, the bad guy just found some sort of saw in the back of a fashion show and started to saw into this fat guy until this other dude, who is just standing around, decides to stick up for him. Well, he is met with a knife to the face. Eventually for some reason the dudes are let go (and later both killed because the bad guys thought they were talking to the cops.)
More pointless scenes follow as later into this "movie" Kersey's girlfriend is confronted by a really screwed up transvestite in the women's bathroom and has her head bashed into a mirror several times. Through this whole scene, the shim seems to be very sweaty and getting off to what he/she is doing. She doesn't die here, but once she says she will testify against this mob boss (who is coincidentally her ex-husband) she gets shot by a guy with a severe dandruff problem...thats right there is a creep who's gimmick is bad dandruff.
At this point, this is where the movie shows Bronson at his finest as he plots to kill just about everyone involved in his girlfriends death because he thinks the law cannot deal with it properly. He starts off by poisoning some fat guy's canoli with cyanide and forcing this guys mom to watch him gag to death. Then (and this is the most ridiculous part of the movie) he goes to a toy store and buys a soccor ball that can move via remote control (do they even make those things) and then rolls the ball into the home of who I have came to call Dandruff Man so the guy will pick it up. Then Bronson gets his attention and says something along the lines of "I got the solution to your dandruff problem right here..." and the detonates a bomb which was inside the remote control soccor ball the entire time! I don't know how they make this crap up. Other unique death scenes include a part where Bronson holds this guy up and is near an automatic plastic wraper. He makes the guy hold the part where the plastic begins so he can turn on the machine and wrap this dude in plastic. After he plugs him for info, he hangs him up on another machine that spins around this big room and turns it on. Later, a fellow goon enters very nervously, sees the guy and thinks he's Bronson and shoots him three times for no reason, then gets shot later by Bronson. But the funniest is when Bronson pushes a guy into a pointless pond of acid or something and we have to watch him slowly be eaten my it.
Sure all of this sounds like it could make an interesting movie, but what I just listed above won't make the dreadful 1 hour and 35 minutes go any faster. I'd say more about the plot, but it was so simple and yet pointless that I won't even bore you with further plot developments. Bottom line, the only reason to watch any movie in the Death Wish series is for Death Wish 3. That movie is so bad, its absolutely hilarious. In that one, Bronson gets huge guns such as pistols and even ROCKET LAUNCHERS through the mail!!!! Is that legal?! Anyway, unless you're just a fanatic of Mr. Bronson, avoid this movie. It's watchable for most of the death scenes, but other than that, it's just an old Charles Bronson going around and fulfilling people's death wishes.
I give this movie a 7/10 because I can't figure out why they would even make this film, let alone add an instalment to the horrid Death Wish series.
-CWood