Paul arrives to New York to visit his old friend, Charley, but finds him murdered in the apartment. The police arrive and arrest Paul, mistaking him for the murderer. In jail, Paul has a fight with Fraker, the leader of the street gang who killed Charley. Police Chief Shriker releases Paul, who decides to stay in Charley's empty apartment, hoping to get revenge. Gang members break into the apartments and assault the tenants. When Fraker's gang arranges for Paul's new girlfriend, Kathryn, to die in a car crash, Paul buys a gun and starts shooting gang members one by one. Shriker joins him. When Fraker is about to shoot Shriker, Paul uses a rocket launcher to blow up Fraker and half of the apartment. Once their leader is dead, the gang dissolves, and Paul heads back home.
While the 1st "Death Wish" film was actually a good contemplation on the murky topic of vigilantes and ethical problems arising from it, its sequels quickly went the route of "Rambo" sequels, embracing killings as some sort of action-fun roller coaster without any major consequences. Part III is so over-the-top that it is a guilty pleasure, with several unintentionally comical moments that secured it cult status. The villains, the gang members, are presented in such a cartoonish way that "Death Wish 3" becomes a ridiculous experience, a trash fest that resembles a parody at times. The main protagonist Paul turns into an extremist right-wing shooter, using excessive violence against gang members which were dumbed down and distorted so much as to secure the viewers a safe cheering at their killings without any bad conscience. In one fight sequence, a thug stabs a knife into Paul's lower back, but Paul just nonchalantly pulls out the knife, as if it is super easy, barely an inconvenience to him, as if it is an epidural anesthesia. In another exaggerated moment, after being assaulted by the thugs, Maria dies in the hospital from a broken arm (!), while in the finale Paul even uses machine guns and heavy artillery to shoot and blast dozens of thugs on the streets, in a finale that turned a New York suburb into a war zone. Even the government is presented as incompetent: two police officers take away a gun from a Jewish old couple, and sure enough, cut to the next scene of robbers breaking into their apartment through the window at night. There is even a sequence of a grandpa trying to use a heavy machine gun from the Korean War against the thugs, but since the weapon is jammed, the punks storm his place and throw him from the stairs on the ground. What is too much, is too much. Only two features are worth seeing—the aesthetic cinematography by John Stanier, who uses a wide lens at times; and the elaborate action sequences, with some impressive explosions of buildings—but one has to admit that there is no point in the story, which is just there to indulge the lowest battle and hate urges of the viewers.
Grade:+
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