Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994)

Somehow, vigilante serial killer Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has ended up with a cosy place in the witness protection program. Even if we don’t ask ourselves if a guy with his body count can belong to the category of “witness”, he sure as hell won’t need any protection, for he has most certainly killed everyone who might be tempted to do him harm for the sins of his past, as well as anyone he could be a witness against in a court of law.

Anyway, even though every woman in his live has been killed off to motivate him to another killing spree, our thick-headed protagonist still hasn’t understood he’s cursed (or he’s happily hoping for an excuse for another spree), and has romanced fashion designer Olivia Regent (Lesley-Anne Down). This one’s even bringing a child for additional dramatic potential! Now, Olivia has an ex-husband who just happens to be a tough Irish gang boss named Tommy O’Shea (Michael Parks). Tommy really hasn’t let go of his former wife mentally, and has also insinuated himself into her business as his own private money laundering service. Once she realizes this, encouraged through some moral support by Paul, she’s willing to have a nice little chat or three with the local DA (Saul Rubinek).

Tommy does of course get wind of this, so Olivia first gets her face smashed into a mirror by Tommy’s only vaguely competent henchman (for reasons doing the deed in drag) and killed a couple of scenes later. You know what happens next.

Though, to be fair to Allan A. Goldstein’s only entry into the Death Wish series, which fortunately is also the final film of the series before professional talent void Eli Roth (alas) came along, just might actually surprise you with something. Too bad the surprise is in how boring the director manages to make Bronson’s little killing spree. As regular readers (imaginary or not) will know, I’m not a fan of the first two movies in the franchise, but Michael Winner did at the very least manage a consistent tone of nastiness and unpleasantness with them, whereas Goldstein can’t even shoot a scene of a guy in drag shoving Lesley-Anne Downe’s face repeatedly into a mirror in a way that makes a viewer at least a little queasy. It’s blandness taken to the level of high art.

If that whole scene, or the one where Bronson kills a guy with poisoned cannoli, do suggest to you the general inspired craziness of the very Cannon third or even just the in comparison to this one highly lively fourth Death Wish, you will alas be disappointed too. There’s a quality to Goldstein’s direction that makes even a cannoli-based murder boring to watch.


The director doesn’t get much help from anyone involved in this either: Michael Parks’s big bad and his henchmen are just not terribly interesting; Bronson phones his performance in; and the script by a cast of dozens (including Goldstein again) is disjointed and slow, wasting half of the film on setting up everything even the dumbest audience member understands is coming and is indeed waiting for, until Bronson gets to the – pretty mild – murdering. You’d think that by the fifth movie, at least the reasons for anyone to still watch a Death Wish movie would have been clear to anyone making it, but clearly, I am rather overoptimistic when it comes to the basic sense of some people in the film business.