Death Wish 3 (1985)

As Oscar mentions, the series had degenerated into silly comic-book nonsense by this point. The first "Death Wish" wasn't a great film, but it starts looking like "The Battleship Potemkin" when stacked against this profit-driven crap. Ironically enough, Brian Garfield, the author of the novel "Death Wish", disavowed the cinematic version when it was released in 1974. It's been a long time since I read the book, but I understand his point. In the book, Bronson's character is a middle-aged, overweight member of the petit-bourgeois suddenly confronted with the destruction of his family by brutal, presumably drug-addicted predators, the lumpenproletariat that reside in any large city. Like in the movie, the character goes on a campaign of violent retribution against all muggers and thieves but, unlike in the movie, it's not presented as an apotheosis or an act of liberation from fear; instead, it symbolizes the protagonist's increasing mental and moral deterioration. Unlike Bronson, the bo... Read more

This is really a godawful movie, but fits into the so bad it's good category for me. The plot is something a 5th grader could come up with- Bronson goes to one of those ' this used to be a good neighborhood' hellholes to avenge the death of an old chum, but is, at first, mistaken for the murderer by Ed Lauter, a balding character actor who always plays military figures and corrupt cops, a guy who is in about every other film ever made since the turn of the 70's- though I like him, he's good at what he does. Martin Balsam plays an old guy who's had enough- another stock character from this type of flick, and a coalition is formed by various denizens of the neighborhood who've also had enough. The usual nonsense in this film- the multicultural gang comprised of everything from Hell's Angels to people of various ethnicities with purple hair, and the leader is a big goon with some sort of shave down the middle of his hair, the obligatory scene in which hooligans cause a ruckus in a hard w... Read more