Death Wish

The film that launched a thousand imitators and a genuine cultural argument. Charles Bronson plays a mild architect who, after his family is attacked, starts walking New York at night hoping to be mugged so he can shoot the mugger. The city, in 1974, was ready to cheer.

Michael Winner directs it as provocation and knows exactly what he is selling. It is reactionary, effective, and honest about its own appetite in a way the four increasingly stupid sequels were not.

Watch it aware of what it is doing, which is more than it can say for itself.