Death Wish 3



I missed this movie at B-Fest, so I watched it on DVD in the comfort of my home. Death Wish 3 (1985) came towards the middle of the Reagan-era vigilante thriller cycle, and it it's surprising to see that the genre ran out of gas so fast. Death Wish 3 hits all the plot points such a movie has to make completely without passion. Charles Bronson almost literally sleepwalks though most of his scenes, showing little reaction to the predestined events which are supposed to drive his character’s rage, like his old friend getting beat to death or his new girlfriend dying in a horrible car wreck.


"Killed by marinara sauce? Paul Newman is a dead man!"

In this movie vigilante Paul Kersey finds himself battling one of those impossibly well organized multi-ethnic gangs that only exists in bad movies. The gang, led by Fraker, is terrorizing an apartment block, which is of course also more ethnically diverse than an hour of Coca-Cola commercials. Despite the fact that the easily identifiable gang members brazenly commit crimes in broad daylight the Police Are Powerless to Stop Them™. So powerless that the police chief tells Paul that Fraker has a clean arrest record, even though just a one scene earlier Fraker was in jail, screaming in full view of cops about how he was going to kill a random old lady for the fun of it. Clearly the man is a genius at manipulating the criminal justice system.

The police chief essentially gives Paul a license to kill members of the gang (oddly, I don’t think the gang had a name), so Paul goes back to the apartment building and befriends the tenants, while also implementing complicated mechanical and social traps for the gang members. Perhaps the most bloodthirsty of these traps is aimed to catch a certain gangster nicknamed “the Giggler.” The Giggler runs so fast no one can catch him, so Paul goes walking at night with an expensive camera under his arm. When the Giggler grabs the camera and runs, Paul shoots him in the back, garnering applause from onlookers. I suspect that the filmmakers realized that this looked cold, so some dialogue was added to an earlier point in the film about how everyone knew the Giggler was involved in a murder. This may seem like thin evidence to be shooting a stranger on the street, but these kinds of things made more sense in Reagan’s America.


Charles Bronson takes advantage of the 'Guns for Geezers' program.

There also has to be a love interest in these kinds of films, so Paul gets Kathryn. Kathryn is a social worker at the jail where Frank is taken. She tries to convince him to file wrongful arrest charges against the police, but he refuses, practically without saying a word. Of course this makes Kathryn fall madly in love with him, so she tracks him down a couple days later and asks him out on a date. On their second date the sleep together (a scene that made me a little queasy, because Paul is easily old enough to be her father), and after one additional appearance she’s murdered by Fraker in a spectacular fashion. He walks up to her car, punches her, then releases the car’s parking brake. The car rolls downhill and into traffic, where it immediately erupts into a huge fireball upon contact with another car. Remember, this is back when all American cars were made out of explodium.

Now that a disposable love interest character Paul had no discernable reason to like has been killed, the gloves are off. Paul builds more deadly traps and attacks a gathering of gangsters with a WWII surplus belt-fed machine gun! Fraker responds by calling in the “other gangs” from around the city. All out warfare erupts, with the united gang members throwing themselves in front of whatever bullets Paul sends their way, apparently heedless of any danger to themselves and without needing any promise of reward. The final confrontation takes place in small apartment where the movie started, with Paul blasting Fraker with a missile launcher, and the resulting explosion miraculously leaving Paul unscathed even though he is only about ten feet away.


"Say hello to my little friend!"

Death Wish 3 is awful, and Charles Bronson looks like he knows it. He barely delivers his dialogue at an audible level, and his appears to be physically exerting himself s little as possible. After the third time some punk goes flying from a stiff-arm chop by the geriatric Bronson I began to notice that his topee was doing more heavy acting than he was. Despite the use of machine guns and rocket launchers, Death Wish 3 has signs of cost cutting all over it. Incredibly, there would be two more Death Wish movies after this one.

Posted: Sun - March 13, 2005 at      

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