The Year of Cannon: Death Wish V: The Face of Death! (1994)

No Budget. No Enthusiasm. No Grenade Launchers. No Fun.

This post is a bit of cheat. Death Wish V: The Face of Death came out in 1994 and was after the collapse of Cannon as we have come to understand it during our yearlong deep dive into it on Invasion of the Podcast. The film was actually distributed by Trimark Pictures (which had its own dubious line up of releases) and now rests with MGM. Technically this isn't a 'true' Cannon film and would not normally be considered when reviewing their weird library, however, I decided to cover it for two reasons: 1.) Cannon didn't actually produce the first Death Wish film, so I feel like there is a bit of symmetry to this. And, 2.) I have already watched the first four films, and I figured I was this close to the end, I might as well run out the series.

Does Death Wish V return to its original vision of a man forced to find justice on his own(or so he convinces himself) or does it continue down the cartoonish path of distasteful and tone deaf violence?

Does Charles Bronson, in his last theatrically released film, summon more than professional boredom to get through til the end of film without actually yawning while delivering his lines? I think we can all assume the answers to those questions, so let's ride this thing out to the sunset and hope to enjoy it as we go.

Did you see that they used a shot of the opening credits in the trailer? 

It's like that no one was paying attention to any portion of the production process. 

Death Wish V: Deathface picks up 7 years after the last film and with Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson, if it isn't obvious by now) walking away scott-free from the cops after GRENADE LAUNCHING A PERSON TO DEATH (for the second time, mind you). He has moved from the west coast back to New York because evidently there is like a 10 year statute of limitations to being a murder crazy vigilante the must have passed. He is yet again in a relationship with a younger woman. To be fair, the actress playing her is 40... Bronson is 73, though. Old habits die hard, right?

Let's talk about Old Man Bronson for a bit here. I don't think he has ever looked young. Here he is at age 40, in a 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone:

Seen here all fancied up in his Formal Flintsone attire. 

He looks like how Josh Brolin looks at age 50 when he is Cable.

Okay, I get it. I will keep my mouth shut. I will never look as good as either of you no matter what age I am.

Bronson was just born old, and that is perfectly okay. He always had a great look about him and he is forever burned into cinema history as a badass. There does come a point where old is too old for the lead in what is supposed to be an action film, at least the kind that Bronson was known for:

Face Death.

I will be honest, I felt a little sad seeing him look this old in what would be his last theatrically released film. I still would be scared to be alone with him if he felt that I slighted him, but maybe it was time to hang it up. No one should be 73 doing the 5^th film in a bloody action franchise that started with one message and is now a distorted shadow of its former self...

Look it up, it's true. 

Well, shit. Never mind. Back to Death Wish 5: Wishing 4 Death.

Kersey's new lady, Olivia (Lesley-Anne Down) is a fancy high end fashion designer in NYC and has a private runaway to show off her most recent creations and a sweat shop style factory just below it make the merchandise. It doesn't make any sense and it is very easy to see that seats around the runway are folding chairs and that the sheet metal interior looks like an early Chipotle.

I will have a burrito bowl and a sexy bald mannequin for dine-in, thanks. 

Kersey is there to support the launch of her new line and we learn that she has a young daughter, Chelsea (Erica Fairfield) and that she loves Paul. We eventually find out that Paul has been placed into witness protection by the government for... reasons?... and that he is now a professor of architecture and has the government assigned fake identity of... Paul. Pretty good life, nothing can possibly go wrong here.

In steps Olivia's ex-husband and father of Chelsea, Tommy O'Shea, played by the usually wonderful Michael Parks. I think the only notes that were given to him here were 'we don't have the budget to give you any true depth, just turn 'being a racist abusive organized crime guy' up to 11, no up to 12, no up to a bajillion.

He looks like if someone was making a knock of Breaking Bad. 'Oh, and his name will be Gregory Gray!' 

Turns out, Tommy, wasn't too keen on Olivia leaving him and taking their daughter, so he has slowly but surely worked his way into her garment designing business. He is going to force Olivia back to him one way or another. How do we know that Tommy is truly a piece of shit? Blah, blah, blah, attack some floor manager guy with a industrial cutting tool after threatening him with a vat of industrial acid, burn an African American guy's hands with a steam press and make racist comments the entire time, you get it. Tommy and his three thugs are the worst of the worst. We know where this is going to go. Tommy has to light the Kersey's fuse somehow or there wouldn't be a movie. So how does that happen?

Just as Kersey is going to finally commit to Olivia and propose to her while they are out at a nice dinner, she goes to the rest room and is assaulted by one of Tommy's men while they are dressed in drag. It really makes no sense as to why the need for him to be in drag. I think it was to try and make it all seem more perverse and weird but it just felt flat and tone deaf, a feeling that would permeate the entirety of this film. It leaves Olivia's face disfigured and sets Kersey on an all too familiar path.

Meanwhile, Tommy gets his men to take care of the garment factory manager that went to the cops. I don't think physics work this way.

Who ordered the turnover? 

Kersey tries to get law enforcement to help, a handful knows of his vigilante past, and they convince Olivia to testify against Tommy. Turns out Tommy has an inside man and knows this is going to happen, so they break into Olivia's place and kill her. As Tommy has an airtight alibi, he isn't charged and he can take legal custody of Chelsea, who just wants to live with Paul.

Tommy has a Death Wish.... Part V. Fuse F*cking lit.

Let's take quick stock of what happens to the women that are around Paul Kersey before we move on.

• Death Wish: Kersey's wife is beaten to death in their apartment while their daughter is raped.
• Death Wish 2: Kersey's housekeeper is beaten and raped. His daughter, who is pretty much catatonic after the events of the first film, is raped again and then jumps out of the second story window of a warehouse and dies by getting impaled on a iron fence stake. His new girlfriend eventually learns about his vigilante doings and breaks off their engagement.
• Death Wish 3: Kersey's new new girlfriend is knocked out in her car and pushed downhill into oncoming traffic and causes the car to explode.
• Death Wish 4: The Crackdown: Kersey's new new new girlfriend's daughter dies to a crack cocaine overdose and later the new new new girlfriend is shot in the back while running to Paul.

Moral of the story: Paul Kersey has a worse track record with families and girlfriends than Terry O'Quinnin in the Stepfather series. Who knew that it was the women around him that had the actual death wish?

So do you think that maybe, just maybe, we might get that moment of self reflection from Paul Kersey in which he ponders the circumstances in his life that always brings him back to the loss of loved ones around him and the need to meter out justice on his own, one bullet at a time? If you believed that, then you have not been paying attention to the arc of the series to this point, which really isn't so much an arc as as it is a sharp and steady descent into meanness and meaninglessness. Oh, Death Wish V: I'm Dreaming of a Death Wishmas tries to convince you that it is a more meditative piece with not one, but two, segments in which we have Charles Bronson drive around aimlessly or unlock his wall safe to access his gun while clips of audio from the previous scenes play over top. It is trying to apply depth to a film incapable of having any at all. Or maybe the film knew people were bored and weren't paying attention and had to remind them of what just had happened.

I was one of those people. I honestly had to go take a nap in the middle of watching this film. The nap was glorious, btw.

Dr. Steve Brule always knows what you need. For your health!

Once awake and refreshed, I had to give the film a smidge of credit, though in a backhanded way. It initially limited Kersey to just his own handgun. That felt like a callback to the original film before everything went off the rails. He didn't have a full Chuck Norris level arsenal at his disposal and that felt more appropriate. This is likely due to the low budget and maybe I am reading too much into it. Besides. He had other weapons at his disposal.

He figured out one of Tommy's goon's schedules and waited for him to show up to a family owned Italian restaurant. Once the goon was there, Kersey sprinkled arsenic on his canoli. That sequence is boring and stupid, so it is not gif worthy. The newspaper headline right after is pretty great though:

'Death by Dessert' would have been more thematically appropriate for the franchise though.  

Word gets around to Tommy that someone is attacking his men. How this is delivered to him is... interesting.

Church is no place for a child!

Kersey then stakes out the goon that assaulted Olivia and cut her face up. He figures out the guy is paranoid and has security all over his gated home. Kersey then comes up with the obvious solution:

Want to play soccer but not be bothered with kicking it and stuff? I got your covered. 

Well all know what to do with a remote controlled soccer ball, right?

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tommy knows that Kersey is coming for him and decides to use Chelsea as bait to draw him out to the garment factory/fashion runway/Chipotle. Tommy has approximately 3 hired guns left and Kersey makes short work of two of them. He keeps the third alive for information. The way he accomplishes this is probably the best part of this film.

Well that just about wraps it up. 

Soon Kersey and Tommy have a showdown and Tommy surprisingly doesn't get grenade launched to death. He ends up backing into the vat of industrial acid that was teased at that beginning of the film. The good cop that knows that Kersey is the vigilante let's him walk free again. With no regard to Chelsea and her safety, or the trauma that must exist in his own head afeter losing people close to him over and over again, Kersey turns his back on the cop and says 'Hey Lieutenant, if you need any help, give me a call.' Freeze fame, credits.

I honestly didn't know what to expect out of Death Wish V: Death Harder, but it ended up not being much of anything at all, which is somehow worse than the sins the series committed with 3 and 4 in raising the violence to cartoonish levels with no true consequences to Paul Kersey. At least that was something you could sit around with friends and have a laugh at while understanding that the films completely lost any semblance of credibility or reason and to just have fun with them. This was just dull, mean, and meandering. For a film series with death in its name, the last portion felt dead on arrival.

So that's it for the Death Wish series, I guess? Well aside from the unofficial remake, and the officialremake, and the other unofficial unofficial remake. If you want a film about an everyday guy that has been pushed into seeking out justice on his own and how messy and personally complicated it can be, may I recommend Jeremy Saulnier's 2013 film, Blue Ruin. It shows what the cost of revenge is and it has real consequences.

I am glad that I did run the series of Death Wish films because I do love Charles Bronson, and I had not seen any of them until this year. There are some fun moments to be had in them, for sure. I just wish, pun intended I guess, that there had been more substance to the man behind the gun.

Parting Cannon Shots

Is this better or worse than The Apple?

This is worse than The Apple. At least The Apple has some life to it. I would rather sit through that very confusing musical with no true ending than what this slog again.

The Menahem Index: 

20% Just because his name is still attached as a producer. I don't think he got much say in what happened, and I don't think that would have the any better or worse anyway. 

Would I recommend this film to anyone? 

Only if you are a completest like me. Otherwise, this is not a film I would recommend to anyone as a standalone watch. 

If you do happen to want to want to watch the film, it is up in its entirety on Daily Motion, you can check it out here.