Death Wish 3 (1985)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) I’ve been plumbing the depths of 1980s Hollywood lately, and movies seldom get as crazy as Death Wish III. If the original 1974 film was arguably a statement on early-1970s urban crime and the second 1982 film became an outright exploitation picture, this third instalment goes full-on bonkers in an attempt to give more to the target audience. Here we have the series protagonist (once again played by Charles Bronson, here in his mid-sixties) coming back to New York to visit an old army buddy. Except that the cops know what he’s done and are aware of the bad neighbourhood where he’s going and they have a deal for him: kill as many criminals as you want, and let us claim the credit. With a setup like that, it’s no surprise to find out that the protagonist’s army buddy is one of the last decent people in a crime-ridden neighbourhood where even the police fear to tread. Put together as if someone had no experience of American cities other than the worst crime dramas of the 1980s, this neighbourhood hosts ludicrous gangs with stylish looks that pretty much do whatever they want to anyone. Bronson steps in with a crime-fighting attitude and an unexplained supply of heavy weaponry. It all escalates ludicrously to out-and-out urban warfare by the end of the film, complete with anti-tank rockets being used to dispatch opponents. We’re far, far away from the 1970s angst of revenge here … and that may be part of the film’s peculiar charm. The Death Wish series has never been about serious exploration of issues, and while Death Wish 3 is fantastical in the way it treats New York City as a playground for explosive mayhem … at least it’s a bit less hypocritical about its intention. It’s really not a good movie, but at least it’s interesting in its craziness. In keeping with the series’ tradition of having a famous actor in an early role, here we have the always-stunning Marina Sirtis playing a victim of the hooligans. I’m not even covering half the nonsense of the film: Suffice to say that Death Wish 3 inches toward the have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed category of the worst of 1980s Hollywood. Alas, there’s a lot of competition in that field, but still: at least it’s an improvement over Death Wish 2.