IMAGES OF AGGRO

AS WE RETREAT ever deeper into ourselves from the chaos around us—security chains on each door, ‘I spy’ peepholes obtained on mail order through Exchange and Mart in the upper panels, anti‐rape courses for women the latest thing—it is the mildest of consolations to notice that in the world of the once‐silver screen goodies remain after a fashion goodies and baddies are unalterably the people from the other side of the tracks. This, and perhaps only this, can explain the way local cinema managers held on, week after week in some cases, to The Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson plays the average, if also tougher than average, citizen who turns one‐man vigilante to avenge the mugging of his wife and daughter. Bronson is not, of course, at the very best of times the nicest of characters: we recall that in The Stone Killers he was the cop who, had he not been a cop, would have been Public Enemy No. 1. He is said to be in box‐office terms the most profitable actor in the world: as Saigon died, his menacing figure looked down even there from the abandoned cinemas. Eye for an eye moralities are neither new nor localized: but it is instructive that amidst change so pervasive, such attitudes are with us still.