#13: Death Wish 3
Release Date: November 1st, 1985
Format: Streaming (Max)
Written by: Don Jakoby (billed as Michael Edmonds)
Directed by: Michael Winner
3 Stars
I like an earnest, bad movie as much as I like a good movie, and more than I like a mediocre movie. The key is that it has to be earnest in its production and writing and performances. It has to try. I don’t want to watch Sharknado or Snakes on a Plane. I don’t want tough-in-cheek. A great bad movie is one where its reach exceeds its grasp, and typically the end product does not resemble anything of what the talent involved were trying to achieve.
Death Wish 3 is nothing but earnest. It is an exploitation movie that aims to enrage viewers with the depiction of senseless violence perpetrated on innocent citizens in New York City, specifically war veterans, the elderly, and women. There is rape, gang beatings, kidnapping, home break-ins, and murder.
And what’s the payoff for such despicable acts? How is the audience rewarded after seeing such depravity? They get to see a 64-year-old Charles Bronson absolutely go fucking berserk on the punks. The climax of the movie, spoiler alert, has Ol’ Charlie Bronson point-blank shooting a missile launcher at the leader of the gang and blowing out the side of an apartment building. Really good stuff.
Other stuff I really liked:
Charles Bronson comes up with an idea to bait a thief by carrying an expensive Nikon camera while he’s walking the street late at night. While loading his .475 Wildey magnum pistol in his apartment before he goes out he tells his neighbor, “I’m going out for some ice cream…this is America, isn’t it?”
About that pistol, when it arrives in the mail he tells a different neighbor, “A .475 Wildey magnum is a shorter version of the African big game cartridge. It makes a real mess.”
There’s a female public defender character who inexplicably starts pursuing Charles Bronson’s character romantically. I had to pause the movie to look up the ages of these actors. As I mentioned before, Bronson was 64-years-old when this movie was released, born in 1921. The public defender, played by Deborah Raffin, was born in 1953. She was 32-years-old. Bronson repeatedly turns down her romantic interests, before eventually sleeping with her. The relationship ends when gang members knock her unconscious while she’s in a parked car, put the car in neutral, and roll it down a hill where it smashes into another car and explodes into flames.
Probably my favorite scene is Bronson excusing himself from the dinner table at an elderly Jewish couple’s home because he hears guys breaking into a bait car that he’s parked in front of the apartment building. When he gets out there he asks, “Hey, what’s the problem?” They reply, “What?” Bronson: “With the car…what’s the problem?” They call him a motherfucker and tell him to get lost, that they’re stealing the car. Bronson shoots and kills them both, and then goes back inside and finishes dinner. It’s incredible.
There is a longer thought piece that could be written about Death Wish 3 that would include an analysis of Reaganism, the Greatest Generation, the war on drugs, cinema violence, gender, race, and urban vigilantism. Was DW3 trying to make a commentary about any of these things? No. Absolutely not. Does it at least succeed as a compelling revenge action flick? No, not really. The sets are bad, the dialogue is bad, the performances are bad, and the plot is ludicrous. But damn it, it tries. At least it does that.
