Best movie ever!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey arrives back in New York City and is forcibly recruited by a crooked police chief to fight street crime caused by a large gang terrorizing the neighborhoods. Death Wish 3 is 50 times the Death Wish that the 2018 remake lacked to be it's fun, over the top and above all action packed from start to finish with Charles Bronson being an absolute beast and as much as i might loved the first one? This one is way it's like the Rambo: First Blood Part II of the Series and it's just as good. (A+)

This is the Empire Strikes Back of the Death Wish saga. A tour de force of violence starring one of the best action stars and mustaches of all time Charles Bronson. It's the most violent of the bunch, giving Charlie plenty of opportunity to do what he is best at: murder everyone that gets in his way. This is basically Commando but in New York which looks like an anarchistic wasteland where law has failed completely. As a huge fan of ridiculous 80s action this ranks near the top with the best of them and it is the best straight-up action movie that Charlie ever made (I am not including more dramatic movies like Once Upon a Time in the West). I think all the Death Wish movies should be watched in the sequence that they were released in, in order to get the full story and understand all the nuanced character development but if someone was only going to ever watch one then it has to be Death Wish 3.

Factually speaking Death Wish 3 is a bad movie, in fact you might even say it's a terrible movie and yet at the same time it's also a TERRIBLEY ENTERTAINING movie.More generic, B-Grade, 80's action-schlock from our good old friend's of Golan-Globus and the Cannon Films Group and for this installment, we have the almighty: Death Wish 3! In the opening moments of this tasteless classic of 80's murder and mayhem, we have Bronson being literally bused into his old hunting grounds of New York City, which is being over-ran by street gang's (ripe territory for old Charlie-Boy). With it's paper-thin plot, stodgy acting and not so clever, dumbed-down dialog (all of which are VERY common traits among movies from Cannon Film's), Death Wish 3 easily ranks as the most ridiculous of the Death Wish films; and best of all it boasts insane amounts of over-the-top, runnin' and gunnin' violence. And surprise, surprise wouldn't you know it Death Wish 3, just like all the other films of the series revolves around the tried and true motive of Revenge (you didn't actually think they were going to break from the pattern, did you?). Except this time Bronson is literally "hired" by the N.Y.P.D. to "take out the trash" and speaking of which, the cop's as depicted in this movie, are as unethical in their method's as any American police force you'll ever see and it all starts with a case of wrongful arrest.Death Wish 3 is 92 minutes of enormously entertaining schlock which is composed primarily of hyper-violent vigilante justice shoot-out's, juxtaposed with a series of other scenes such as: prison cell drama, post office drop-in's, hospital visitations, super-modest dinner parties (thrown by old couples), half-baked romances (thankfully very brief), convenience store perusals and shady meetings with crooked cops, all this somehow comes together much better then it has any right to and there's rarely a dull minute to be found - and just wait for the awesome finale! Death Wish 3 reunites the collaborative dream-team of veteran director Micheal Winner (director of the first Death Wish film) and his most-esteemed colleague Mr. Charles Bronson; and with these two calling the shots, well, there apparently was no holding them back, because they pulled out all the stops for this effort and the end-result is a genuine shoot em' up classic! Booby-trap's included! That's right, half a decade before Kevin McCalister was rigging his families stately home full of nifty G-rated booby-traps, Bronson was laying down HIS vision of what booby-traps are all about, not surprisingly most of them tend to be rather deadly. Yes this movie is just a blast, a glorious hour-and-a-half long barrage of epically unhinged urban warfare. I think any viewer who's even just half-attentive to what's going on, will readily see just how generic and simplistic the plot to this movie is, it's really nothing more than an -excuse- to get Bronson back in New York (his old killing grounds) and to get back in the groove. If the murder of his old friend "Charlie" wasn't enough reason for Charles Bronson a.k.a. Paul Kersey a.k.a. The Vigilante to start taking out the trash once again, well don't worry because he's essentially blackmailed into doing just that, by a crooked police chief (played by Ed Lauter) - but not before Chuck literally kicks the chief in the balls. Yep this movies just all kinds of fun, but unfortunately, sigh..... they also felt the need to include a half-baked "romantic angle" between old Chuck and this blonde woman reporter, who's young enough to be his (grand)daughter. Ultimately this romance of their's seems impossibly unlikely and as unconvincing as it gets and yet she's SOMEHOW hopelessly smitten with this 65 year-old pensioner. Thankfully this love affair of their's is very brief, flippant you might say and ends in fiery disaster. Now on this call, my intuition is telling me that she was ham-handedly thrown into the mix merely for the purpose of further fueling the Vigilante's wrath. It's a well-known fact, that the 80's are a veritable goldmine for bad movies and let me tell you Death Wish 3 is one hell of a golden nugget, it has just about everything covered that you possibly want in a low-budget action flick from the dubious duo of Golan-Globus (wildy prolific A-List schlockmeister's). The fact that this movie was released in 1985, places it dead-center in the 80's and you know what, absolutely everything about this kill-crazy classic looks and sounds like it was spawned from right out of that era - the 80's. For starters, you have all the distinctively bad fashions and hair-styles (love to see all those Jerry Curly's!) merging together and of course you have it's terrible soundtrack wailing away right from the opening credits, it sounds profoundly dated (did Jimmy Paige REALLY make that music....cringe). If I remember correctly, there's even some break-dancing in here somewhere - a true crime against all things decent (MUCH LIKE THE MOVIE ITSELF! LOL!!) is perpetrated by a comical character with dread-locks and wearing this tragic combination of a neon-green belly-shirt with red suspenders and gaudy graffiti-style Zubaz. Wow, hideous 80's fashion's....... When I said that it came from the 80's - well just take a discerning look at Death Wish 3, it pretty much looks like it STAYED in the 80's and it sort of serves/functions as a low-budget B-grade 1980's action movie time-portal - not entirely unlike a more violent, long-playing, episode of the A-Team. "I love it when a plan comes together" and Bronson and Winner's plan certainly DID come together. On an end note, I really do think they should have ended the series with this one, ending Death Wish on a high-note, but the world's appetite had yet to be satisfied - hence 2 more (unnecessary) sequels; but they too also have their moments, it's just that they aren't as white-hot as this one.

I'd like some small appreciation for having forced myself to sit through this jejune junk. I only did it because, I don't know, call it a sense of public service, like the bystander who flags you to a stop on the road because there's been a serious accident ahead.It's a cartoon world in which Bronson is still Paul Kersey, ten years older, returned to New York and more or less forced by the incompetent and corrupt police to do their work for them -- killing street punks. They even allow him to carry an illegal pistol. The cops are pretty corrupt. They don't want to do their jobs especially, but they do want favorable notices in the media. Bronson does the job for them, setting himself up in the room of a friend who was killed by the street rats, somewhere in the Bronx. The rats run the dilapidated neighborhood. The good guys are holed up in the same project as Bronson, determined to not let themselves be driven out by the riffraff. These companions include a nice elderly Jewish couple, and Martin Balsam, also sadly aged. Their walls are decorated with military medals and photos of people in uniform, including one of General George S. Patton, just so you know where we're at here. There is a close up of a Charles Russell reproduction of the cavalry riding to the rescue. A menorah figures prominently in the shots of the apartment of the nice elderly Jewish couple.Bronson begins cleaning the Augean stables by whacking one would-be rapist over the head with a lug wrench. Two others make the mistake of trying to steal the new car that Bronson has used as bait. Two shots and no more back talk from these punks. The punks themselves are a stereotype out of somebody nightmare. They cackle like raving lunatics as they break into someone's apartment and pillage the place, gleefully throwing the television set against the wall, slashing the furniture. The gangs slaughter other punks who happen to stumble on their turf. "Kill 'em," says the leader, Gavan O'Herlihy, a skin head like most of the others and a thoroughly evil, pimply guy with big teeth showing when he sneers, which is constantly. It's a racially integrated gang, of course, because political correctness would tolerate nothing else.Not to minimize the threat of street crimes, even as late as 1985. New York was a jungle. It was about that time that Bill Moyers produced a documentary on the subject, shot on the crowded steps of a Bronx tenement, in which an old white lady told Moyers she was afraid to leave her apartment because they'd come in through the window. (That's exactly what they did during the interview.) She showed Moyers her few valuables. She always kept them with her to keep them safe. Moyers looked around at the crowd, hushed her and told her to put them away. Fifteen years earlier two kids, no older than twelve, ran up to me on 113th Street in Harlem and demanded my money. "What money?" "THIS money, MF!", and one pulled out a pistol aimed it in my general direction and it went off with a loud report. It was as if there was no law at all, and every person who was on the wrong turf was like a game animal in a preserve.At any rate, the gangstas kidnap and gang bang the pretty young wife of one of the good Hispanics in the neighborhood and it's about this time that Bronson decides that the little snub-nosed revolver the cops allow him to carry around won't do. He buys a real monster. A .475 magnum automatic. "Makes a real mess," comments Bronson as he shows it off to his mates. He strolls down the night-time street using a camera as bait. When a neighborhood kid grabs it and runs, Bronson splatters him with the elephant gun. All the people of color come running and applauding because the kid was a nuisance. "Right on!," they shout as Bronson saunters away.I'm -- I'm sorry. I couldn't sit through the second half. Save the applause. Maybe next time.