Michael Winner's provocative film is slightly more intelligent and much more insidious than Richard Fleisher's 'Mr.Majestyk.'<br /><br />Charles Bronson is a Manhattan middle-aged architect who was at work's one day, when three brutal punks invade his Riverside Drive apartment and attack his loving wife and happily wed daughter... The wife was beating to death and the daughter savagely sexually assaulted, and sent traumatized into a near-vegetable state... <br /><br />To escape the oppressive urban environment, Bronson goes to Tucson, Arizona on business, and gets the gun code of the Old West imprinted on his mind... He was given a .32 pistol as a going away present by a gun-loving millionaire... <br /><br />Back in New York, Bronson carries one night his gift, and kills the first mugger who was molesting him... The first one was the hardest! <br /><br />Then he discovers he likes it... He begins deliberately to tempt muggers, whether in an alley, on a subway train, or in a park... and that he mechanically guns them down... <br /><br />The police couldn't identify him... This made him the 'avenging angel,' a true phantom 'one-man crusade.' In the eyes of the public, Bronson became a national figurethe vigilante... <br /><br />The authorities were worried sick about the example he was setting... His actions seemed to be giving others new attitudes toward crime in the streets...<br /><br />When Inspector Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) identifies the mysterious vigilante, he was immediately ordered to scare him off... <br /><br />The police commissioner asks him to quit, to desist, to go away, to stop!<br /><br />If you have never seen Bronson in action by sundown, 'Death Wish' is the one to see... <br /><br />Final comment: Rarely have I found myself so caught between my own gut reactions and intellectual reservations... I wish (with many here) to touch an exposed nerve in fearful Mexico, particularly of its muggers, thugs, kidnappers, and rapists, who (as in this film) could be easily eliminated if every upright, middle-class, middle-aged citizen got himself a weapon and used it at least one time a week... We are tired of being frightened, endangered and ripped-off daily... If the law is fighting a losing battle against the criminal element and can't protect innocent people, then maybe someone else should... It is very important that we know how to protect ourselves within the law...