Houdini's Magic Movie Ticket

Lately AMC has been running the "Death Wish" movies in sequence, and I've been trying to keep up. Tonight was the fourth installment. Charles Bronson is great!

The basic premise of most of the films is that a female close to Bronson is abused or killed due to "Creep" activity. So Bronson sets out to eliminate the problem, through the use of lethal force.

In a world where red tape and lawyers conspire to give every bad guy "just one more chance," and the bad guys (probably) stay bad, it's honestly refreshing to be confronted with the "Death Wish" mode of vigilante justice. When you look at bad guys one way, you think, "They might change..." But when you look at them another way, you think the thoughts Bronson's character is probably all too familiar with: "They're no good, and they're going to stay that way. They need to be eliminated."

So in "Death Wish 4" Bronson wages a war on drugs. He infiltrates two major groups and plays them off one another, to the point where they destroy themselves. Then he needs to take down a mystery player. It's pretty entertaining once you reconcile yourself to the "Death Wish" brand of justice.

I liked one part at the very beginning, when he's in a parking garage, about to take out a punk, and the guy says, "Who are you?" Bronson replies, "Death," and kills the guy, who lands on the ground face down. Bronson turns the guy over and sees -- himself!! And then he wakes up. It was wild.

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