| Death Wish II (1982) Cast:Charles Bronson,Jill Ireland,Vincent Gardenia, Laurence Fishbourne Death Wish II is nothing but a pointless carbon copy that tarnishes the classic Death Wish thanks to it's ugliness. The plot for those care has Bronson's daughter attacked, so he becomes a vigilante again and cleans up Los Angeles. Death Wish II looks extremely bad, where as the predecessor was dark because of it's polish, ths sequel seems to be shot with a color filter which makes everything seem murky. The onlyr reason why I don't give this a "NO STARS" rating is because of my liking for Charles Bronson. Death Wish II is such a dull and predictable waste of time that even the cast seem well aware of the overall junkiness of the production which is too much of a rip off of the first to work and not half as entertaining as the sequels, they for one have a lot of over the top violence to them. This is just a witless bore that contains poorly staged (and lit) action scenes and uninspired acting, not to mention a very brutal rape scene that goes beyond the limits of even the most sickening exploitation movie. Even Bronson is in poor form, usually we can depend on his quiet solid charisma, however here he's playing merely by the numbers. Also the editing from scene to scene is often times awkward as we cut to the thugs and then out of nowhere goes to salsa music played by a hispanic band. Another example of poorly edited scenes is how the rape scenes themselves seem to cut out of nowhere with Bronson taking his daughter sailing. This is of course is used to set up the so called happy life that will be interrupted by violence but the technique is so crude it makes one wonder if they edited this thing with a machete. Then there are scenes which need editing the most, for instance we get too many scenes of Bronson walking around doing nothing. In anycase Death Wish II represents the worst in sequelitis, it was made almost identical to the first film, yet somehow the overall power and rhythm is lost. This is easily the worst entry because at least the subsequent entries are too over the top and competently made to disgust the viewer. Death Wish II on the other hand is a piece of witless garbage. D.Michael Winner * |