This is one of those “controversial” hard crime dramas that sprang out of the post-hippie movement of the late 60s, consequences of free love and “crime isn’t crime” or whatever happy horseshit they were peddling. They even directly refer to our main character Paul (Charles Bronson) as a bleeding-heart liberal. Certain films are cyclical. Interesting to see this movie from 1974 through a (current) 2026 lens while certain crimes stats are on the rise again. “You need more cops.” “Nobody could afford the taxes.” Hahaha, they laugh jokingly. How naive! But yeah, leave it to the cops and see what happens. Leave it to the self-protecting armed individual and look what happens to crime rates? Weird.
Paul and his wife enjoy their vacation in Hawaii. But then back to the shitty urban craphole known as New York City. They are comfortable, with a nice apartment with a doorman, Paul has a good job doing real estate architecture developments. Then crime hits home, and his wife and daughter are unfortunate victims of it. But ultimately, they just become another statistic, and the Korean war vet “conscientious objector” Paul realizes he objects to a lot more shit lately. And it’s easier to do that when defending yourself with a gun! The great equalizer, ain’t it? And that’s why owning guns is virtually illegal in New York City. Thanks, Bronson! Maybe they woulda laid off if you didn’t do the 9 sequels to this!
This is a pretty well done film even with the slightly cartoonish adversaries, with all the dirty crimes of New York and the underlying politickins and policings and media exploitations of it. Probably the role Charles Bronson is best known for, but I only ended up watching this after a few of his Westerns (Once Upon, Mag 7), he’s pretty good here in the modern-ish era as well. It’s more crime procedural than gritty crime, though there does seem to be an over-abundance of muggings in New York around this time. And maybe some slightly unscrupulous police privacy violations. Plus a very young Jeff Goldblum as a grapey Freak. Some uncomfortable social commentary that actually seems pretty legit. 50+ years later? Yeah. Still Legit.
