Anthony Franciosa, Ben Frank, Charles Bronson

Architect-turned-vigilante Paul Kersey is back, now living in Los Angeles and tracking down five street punks whom murdered his daughter and housekeeper while keeping his secret brand of justice a sec...( read more  read more... )ret from his newest girlfriend and co-workers.

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49% liked it

8,163 ratings

R, 88 min.

Directed by: Michael Winner

Release Date: February 19, 1982

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DVD Release Date: February 3, 2004

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Flixster Reviews (279)


  • August 5, 2009
    "You believe in Jesus? Well, you're gonna meet him."


    Death Wish II arrived eight years after 1974's Death Wish (a smash-hit which apparently reduced the crime rate in New York City during its theatrical run!), and this sequel was clearly green-lit for t

    ...( read more)he sole purpose of cashing in on the success of its predecessor. This is fundamentally a shameless rehash of the original Death Wish that's packed with gratuitous violence and rape. Where the first film presented Charles Bronson's character of Paul Kersey as a victim of violence pushed to breaking point, this follow-up finds Paul in John Rambo territory - he has become an apathetic iconoclast bent on revenge. The underlying moral debate of the first film has vanished, and has been replaced with unhealthy blood-lust. The product is a serviceable actioner that most audiences will find unbearably repugnant.


    This follow-up is a complete break from the Brian Garfield novel series on which the original film is based. Garfield's second novel (entitled Death Sentence) was unused in the creation of this sequel, but was eventually adapted for the screen in 2007 (directed by Saw creator James Wan).


    In what is essentially Death Wish revisited, we find Paul Kersey (Bronson) who's turned loose on the creeps of Los Angeles. The health of his catatonic daughter Carol (Sherwood) is improving, but tranquillity in the family was not destined to be long-lived. Five street punks (one of which is a young Laurence Fishburne) break into Paul's home and assault everyone in sight, resulting in the death of both his daughter and housekeeper. Paul, shaken up and deeply pissed off about the event, plots revenge and begins to methodically hunt down each of the five thugs.


    Where Death Wish persuaded a viewer to support the protagonist's crusade, this support is taken for granted here. Unlike its predecessor, Death Wish II spends no time watching Paul contemplate his actions before turning to vigilantism - he simply goes to work, rendering himself a stoic killing machine. The punks are unimaginative and soulless caricatures, conceived for the purpose of showing how awful the underbelly of society truly is. The portrayal of street crime is so one-dimensional it practically borders on parody. There are literally thugs on every street block, and they're all unmistakable due to how they dress. While admittedly entertaining, Death Wish II is desperately underwritten and underplotted, alternating between violent action, gratuitous rape scenes and banal dialogue passages.


    At the tip of the iceberg, the story of Death Wish II has little credibility - the chances are slim to none that Paul Kersey would suffer two such horrendous experiences during the course of a few years. Credibility is further disregarded during the first ten minutes when a visibly aged Charles Bronson is portrayed as an adept hand-to-hand combat fighter even while battling more agile opponents. One sequence even shows Paul winning a fight with a thug who easily fought off a dozen cops just a few scenes earlier. It's just ridiculous. Death Wish II has no intention of pursuing the interesting themes of its forerunner. Michael Winner dedicates this film to an audience hungry for exploitation.


    Director Winner does stage a number of exciting shootouts, however, though the film as a whole sorely lacks both artistry and style. The pace for this tight 90-minute flick is incredibly brisk, but that comes at the expense of interesting characterisations. On top of all this, former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page (who was Winner's neighbour in the '80s) provides an adequate score.


    All things considered, Death Wish II is enjoyable but thoroughly disappointing, and it was made purely for box office returns. It's routine, lazy and silly. A bunch of entertaining action sequences provides the only reason to watch this sequel. Those who seek more weight and/or gravitas with their action films, however, should avoid this empty-headed actioner at all costs.


    Followed by Death Wish 3.

  • June 3, 2009
    More brutal than the first one and the violent crank up a notch.But at times plays very cartoonsh with action sences.Micheal winner make los angeles of the early 80s a scary place to live in.I would say forget the third and other sequals and just keep to the first one and this.Ch...( read more)rarles Bronson is alway a pleasure to watchon screen and some of his best stuff was from the 70's and early 80's.
  • March 2, 2008
    Dull entry in the series (i'm not bothering with parts 4 and 5)
  • January 28, 2008
    Be grateful for Michael Winner's sledgehammer sensitivity because it produced this classic.

    None of Paul Kersey's (Charles Bronson) remaining family and friends get off lightly in this twisted nightmare of domestic violence, anal rape, vigilante justice and simplistic politics...( read more).

    For fans of rough justice, the rape of Bronson's Mexican housemaid is truly amazing and eroticized like crazy by Winner's leering direction.

    Thomas F. Duffy as Nirvana, the film's lead thug, is really horrible and a joy to behold (in a perverse way).

    Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page provides a rock score that scorches the L.A. imagery and Vincent Gardenia returns as the cop who prefers to look the other way.

    A Cannon-backed sleazefest that brings home the groceries if you like eating trash.

    Screw GONE WITH THE WIND. This is much more entertaining.
  • August 15, 2007
    average sequel!
  • August 11, 2009
    Bronson continues his string of bad luck as his loved ones fall victim to yet another roving gang that steals his wallet, then targets his home for attack, claiming his daughter and housekeeper. He dons his gloves and toboggan hat combo to go into vigilante mode, easily killing ...( read more)all of the criminals involved, generally right beneath the noses of the law enforcement officers involved.

    Fun for the tough guy storyline, but also amazingly unrealistic all the way through.

    Worth a look as a rental.
  • July 20, 2009
    Uhmmm... Definitely not as good as the first, but I still think it was good, in its own way
  • June 26, 2009

    Awesome Movie, after somany years I thought to grab in some of my Husbands Movie collection and found some very interesting Movies like these. After many years I had watch it I totally forgot how brutal this Movie is. Charles Bronson was great Actor. To

    ...( read more)o Bad he was underated after the "Western Era" not many Folks gave his Movie nor him the attention he deserved. Rather than Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson will stay on my "Bad Ass Legends list" No.1
    .
    Husband said the Part 1,3 and 4 were even Brutal. I think I ll watch Part 3 someday.
  • June 10, 2009
    Death Wish 2, carrying on the tradition of torturing Paul Kearsey. Paul is now living in LA and dating a british reporter that resembles Ashlee Simpson at 40 pre-nose job. His daughter is in a mental clinic, learning to come back to the real world.

    On an outing, Paul decides t...( read more)o wait in line for ice cream while his daughter and girlfriend look at glass figurines. Some punks who are really just caricatures if anything else- with names like Stomper, Punkut, Nirvana, and Jiver (and I don't think they were ever called that in the movie itself!) to describe them visually I would call them Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds, a punk from Harold & Kumar that managed to time travel (a mullet like that will do that to you), and Laurence Fishburne. Yes, Laurence is sporting the fashion of the times, a Capone style gangter hat and hot pink shades that can only be dubbed as "futuristic from the 80s point of view." God, can you imagine if those visions of future fashions really did come true? :::shudder::

    Oh wait, I went on a tangent. The hoodlums see Kersey as a mark (after he counts a wad of cash in public) and bump into him in line, harrass him, and he realizes they steal his wallet out of his pocket so he chases after them. He goes after one and beats the snot out of him in an alley but the guy does not have his wallet and Kersey walks back, claiming he forgot his wallet to his lady friend and daughter.

    Cut to the home scene where the housekeeper is watching soap operas while making dinner. The punks bust in and we're reliving Death WIsh 1s pivotal scene- a graphic gang rape scene. I don't care who you are, even if the punks are almost cartoon-esque, this scene is uncomfortable and cringe worthy. Kersey drops off his girl friend and comes home with his daughter, the hoodlooms are waiting and beat him up. The housekeeper runs up with a phone and one of the guys smacks in the head with a crow bar, killing her. They panic and kidnap the daughter because "she's seen us! she can finger us all!" (forget the double entendre, it was the 80s).

    The punks hole up in a warehouse and sit around like caged animals, eyeing the daughter up and down. When they get restless and go in for more rape, she panics, flees, jumps out a window and impales herself on a fence. You know, I really can't blame her- I would start going Kerrigan at that point (why?! why?) if that happened twice in my life.

    This understandably stirs old emotions back up in Kersey, only in this movie he gets the people who actually did the harm (which is a good thing because I want closure, dammit!). First to go down is our mullet time traveler, right in the middle of a drug deal. The second is the jerk Kersey beat up in the alley previously (who gets wounded in the middle of ANOTHER attempted rape in a parking garage). The police at this point start suspecting off the start "It's a vigilante! New York had one! Get them on the line and see how they dealt with it!."

    NY sends the old detective back to LA for damage control, they bureaucrats don't want anyone to find out that they only asked Kersey to stop, they didn't actually stop him. So the detective flies out, only this time, it's personal... (ok, bad joke). The detective squeals to Kersey's g/f (did I mention she's pro criminal rehabilitation)?

    Long story short, cop gets shot as Kersey is stalking Laurence Fishburne to an arms deal. A pimp ride gets blown up. Kersey attacks "Ogre" in a mental ward, his girlfriend turned fiancee dumps him, and his daughter is still dead.

    I still like it, especially if you pay attention to the background scenes (Kersey walking the streets at night and a random pimp shaking a lady in the camera foreground) but the Death Wish series continues as a display of human psychology in extreme retaliation to wrongs, as well as the collective human spirit towards eye for an eye justice.

    So far Deathwish is establishing 'rapist' as a springboard career move, if you take into account Jeff Goldblum from DW1 and Laurence Fishburne in this one.

    In summary, as a testament towards the one quote that represents this movie in my eye, the man who was saved by Kersey alongside his almost raped wife in the parking garage said it best when telling the cops to F-off the vigilante hunt, "Funny, from where I was standing he was a black guy with a red beard."
  • February 15, 2009
    PCP is a helluva drug.

    Still taking itself somewhat seriously as a conservative angry white male manifesto, it falls apart by making the wanton criminal youth vascillate between vandalism, theft, murder, nazi symbolism, and anal rape.

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  • Which of the following actors did not portray one of the gang members in DEATH WISH 2?  Answer »
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