than a half of the entire budget. Golan initially reserved directorial duties for himself, but his preoccupation with directing Crime and Punishment reportedly prevented him from doing so. Michael Winner was available to direct, but was never asked to do so. According to Winner, his lack of interest in directing Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987) may have led Golan to count him out. Golan then hired Steve Carver for the job, an experienced director in the action film genre. Carver was so amused by this that he set up a lunch meeting during which, he recalled discussing with Bronson over the depiction of Paul Kersey. Bronson wanted the character to become more, "sympathetic and less violent as he thought the character was becoming repetitive and that there was nothing really for him to chew on. He wanted a lot of elements that made the character somewhat soft, wanting to get away from the blatant killing of bad guys and the vigilante stuff. He had some humorous ideas". After Carver took his notes from the meeting, he began revising the script with writer, Stephen Peters. Carver worked on the pre-production for two months before Golan decided to replace him after the decision to pare down the budget. His replacement was Allan A. Goldstein, who held dual citizenship as a Canadian and American. Carver believes that it was Goldstein's Canadian ties, which influenced the decision. Goldstein himself was surprised, since he specialized in drama films. Death Wish V: The Face of Death was his first action film. To prepare for directing the film, he tried familiarizing himself with the film series by watching the previous entries for the first time. He soon started revising the script. He attempted to insert humor and black comedy elements. At the time, Bronson and Allan had a strong friendship through the filming. Allan was so impressed by Bronson that he also tried to get a part as a director in Bronson's second-to-last television film, Breach of Faith: A Family of Cops 2 (1997), but failed. Michael Parks was hired for the role of Tommy O'Shea because Allan loved his work. His character was originally supposed to be an Italian mobster, but the character was turned into an Irish mobster. Goldstein also gave some leeway for Parks so his numerous lines in the film are completely improvised. For tax purposes, several of the roles had to