DeathWish V
The Face of Death



This was by far the lamest most sorry Death Wish of all. Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey for the fifth time and this time he's battling fashion designing-organized crime in New York City. This film marks the end of Kersey being an cool old man who takes his rage out on punks and the start of him acting like he's knows he's a big shot on the screen and that he's better than all his opponents. Also he's accurately gone from an amatuer to a pro. He's actually engaged to a woman who operates a fashion design studio. She bringing into the marriage a young girl, and some baggage with her ex-husband who's in organized crime and soon to become Kersey's arch enemy. First of all, the criminals beat up the woman pretty good in a women's rest room in a restaraunt where Kersey and her are dining. This tore up her face beyond recognition, and to a fashion designer this would clearly cause more personal trauma than to a typical person. She's put in the hospital by the injury and the issue of testifying comes up. At first they tell the District Attorney they want to testify. After much violence directed at each of them, Bronson decides to call the D.A. and tell him she won't testify. Of course he knew the phone was tapped and he still intended to testify. This would hopefully throw off the criminals for a while and give them some peace and quiet. Bronson decides he's going to get revenge--bet you didn't see that one coming. First of all he finds one of them always goes into the same coffee shop each morning and stuffs a few pastrys down. Kersey goes undercover and poisons it causing violent choking and inevitable death. Next he goes after one of them who's a security freak and thus has a fortress of a house. Bronson goes to a toy store and buys a soccer ball with a look on his face that suggests he knows he's too clever for a fortress to stop him. The soccer ball gets rolled up to the front of the house tripping several alarms and causing the gangster (who's hair is soaking wet and shampooed) to jump out of a bath with a lady companion to go fix the situation. He goes outside (hair totally dry) ready to fire and sees the soccer ball. In relief he picks it up, but just as he does that, Bronson catches his eye and laughs. He knows what's coming but before he could throw it, the ball explodes killing him and scaring his woman. The criminals are somewhat concerned now, but the boss remains surprisingly calm about the situation. We see now that the D.A.'s assistant and the boss are together suggesting that the boss knows everything about what Kersey's planning. Also, being in the situation to look up past files, this guy know's Kersey's an unstoppable killing machine from his past two encounters in New York. Still the boss is unconcerned and he stays calm. More to come soon!


 


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