Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is a New York City domestic engineer prominently ensconced on the West Side in a comfortable apartment with all the accoutrements of professional success and its concomitant wealth. Returning home from a Hawaiian vacation with his wife, Joanna (Hope Lange), Paul goes back to work only to be interrupted midday by his son-in-law, Jack (Steven Keats) who is the bearer of bad news. It seems Joanna (Hope Lange) and Paul's daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan) were both brutally assaulted in a home invasion by three street punks who followed them home from the grocery store.

Learning at the hospital that Joanna has died and that Carol is catatonic, Paul faces the conflict of his liberal ideals and his rage over having been so grossly violated. Finding little solace in a police force unable to keep up with the criminal element, Paul longs for a solution to calm his mourning.

Offered a trip to Tucson to iron out a development project for his company, Paul reflects on his conscientious objector status in the Korean War and meets up with Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin), the landowner he's trying to assist. Together the two commence their deal and Paul is re-introduced to pistols at a shooting range that reminds him of a more primal streak within.

Returning once again to New York City Paul's business trip is heralded a success yet he remains troubled by his urban helplessness until he stands up to a mugger. Armed with a gift handgun from Jainchill, Paul begins putting himself in harms way to attract criminals and dispatch them with his kind of street justice. One by one he picks muggers off until his vigilantism catches fire in the local and national press.

Detective Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) is put in charge of the investigation and quickly zeroes in on Paul. Before brining him in, however, the Police Commissioner (Stephen Elliott) and District Attorney (Fred. J. Scollay) tell Ochoa to back off because the citizenry has been roused to defend itself with a simultaneous drop in street crimes throughout the City.

Injured in a final confrontation with three muggers, Paul is apprehended by the police and taken to a hospital. While convalescing Ochoa explains how he should leave New York on a company transfer or he will be prosecuted for his crimes. Accepting the offer, Paul moves to Chicago where the film closes on his taking notice of more ruffians disrupting the peace and inviting his continued kind of street justice.

Tagged as, "Vigilante, city style -- Judge, Jury, and Executioner," Death Wish found its frame of reference in rising urban ills and in the source novel of the same name by Brian Garfield. Adapted for the screen by Wendell Mayes with Michael Winner serving as the movie's co-producer and director and Bronson as its star, the picture took the public by storm.

Part of its unusual influence is traceable to the undeniable charisma of the Bronson mystique then knowing its high point of popular appeal. Part of it is also closely connected to the film's depiction of violence, but most certainly of its home invasion.

With Jeff Goldblum in one of his first big screen roles as a mugger, Joanna and Carol's assault may not be as numbingly frightful as certain later depictions of similar crimes like The Accused but the scene packs a powerful wallop because it isn't too farfetched. That is, the three muggers carefully follow their victims and circumvent their apartment building's doorman by using an unannounced freight elevator to then talk their way into the Kersey home.

The resulting crime unravels quickly and includes the bludgeoning of Joanna and Carol's rape. Unseen by Paul, although kept in our memory as his fundamental motivation for all that follows, the assault against innocence demands justice without recourse to more bureaucratic methods like the prevailing system of juris prudence. Naturally the film obliges by avoiding the circumstances that create hoodlums like the ones who invade the Kersey home only for Paul to quickly single them out without too much trouble.

Of course his vigilantism comes with a price in that he's first disgusted by his actions and then rejuvenated by them. As a holdover of the American hero mythologies of the Old West, Paul is a remorseful man but he's no less capable of action despite having emotions and justification for everything he does.

Interestingly his vigilante hero becomes a throwback to older ideas about self-determination and personal integrity. As such the morally righteous gunfighter and the frontier sheriff, both defenders of civilization, typify the type now transformed through individual men meting out justice with the balance of action and contemplation. Updated as it was due to the changed times of Vietnam and various kinds of social disintegration and cultural conflict with the American scene, Paul's vigilante re-enacts the purpose of the gunfighter-lawman, only this time his purpose is made more dubious through association with archly conservative values.

Not that self-preservation and a citizen's right to a peaceful state are necessarily reactive or close-minded traits. It's just that when white men defend such values from positions of privilege against individuals largely of minority and non-privileged status, instead of working against the prevailing cultural environment, they seem less liberating and potentially transgressive and become merely fearful and destructive.

The Garfield source novel warned more closely along these lines about how vigilantism is an effective short-term solution to crime but that it's also the origin of another kind of trouble equally menacing to the body politic. Though the movie's police commissioner and district attorney sense the problem of a successful vigilante that inspires others to act out violently, the notion is given short shrift to showcase Paul's killing powers.

At issue with thinking of Paul as a symptom of wider cultural issues is the importance of remembering how he's motivated by circumstances that easily rationalize his violence. The terror of the home invasion makes virtually all of his subsequent crimes seem justifiable and necessary. Such manipulation encourages a cinematic world where questions outside the story are ignored and so Death Wish obliges us by ensuring that every one of Paul's would-be muggers provokes him before he kills them.

Only a slipshod leftist without stakes in the practical world would ignore Paul's right to defend himself. Yet this right, once expressed as a willful "death wish" to attract criminals and shoot them down once provoked, becomes its own satisfaction. Killing is both a prophylactic measure against future crimes and a visceral sort of big screen entertainment.

Paul's trigger finger manifests our outrage at being victimized with a blast of retributive action but it doesn't fundamentally alter the circumstances that create his assailants. Targeting black and brown muggers is easy pickings when the wide world demands more difficult solutions that can't be simply acted out, man against man with an eye for an eye.

Nevertheless, Death Wish made a mint for Dino De Laurentiis Productions and Paramount Pictures. Its appeal to personal justice for wrongs perpetrated against one's family or person oversimplified the issue to carry a 93-minute long action adventure story.

And an effective 93-minutes it is with Paul's journey from bleeding heart to gun-toting marauder an efficient use of screen time. Then there's the sexy, brilliant score by Herbie Hancock, the portrayal of New York City during one of its less appetizing moments and the sheer value of its historical details filling out the sets, costumes and landscapes to breathe a documentary quality to the proceedings.

Seeing New York City's lesser landmarks like subway cars, phone booths and taxicabs is an odd joy. So is the appeal of Bronson as one of the screen's great non-actor actors exuding menace and confidence through the bristle of his moustache, the brawn of his athletic build and the glint of his eyes staring outward at the world with a fair mix of malice and surprise.

At the very least Death Wish is an intensely satisfying story about a man taking justice into his own hands. But it's also a white male fantasy of strength and redemptive control in the moment of 1974 that was beset on all sides by non-white male influences, attitudes and customs often seen as deviant, other and, more often than not, criminally-minded.