The audacious film asks what it means to be civilized in cities where civilization itself is crumbling.
The movie Death Wish, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, opens with a brief sequence establishing that New York architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) and his wife, Joanna (Hope Lange), although well into middle age, are still very much in love with each other. They’re vacationing on an idyllic beach in Hawaii, and when she steps out of the surf and stretches out beside him on the sand, they kiss. She asks if they should go back to the hotel, obviously to take their intimacy to a higher level. He asks, “Why not here?” She replies: “We’re too civilized.”
