By the time the third Death Wish movie came out in 1985, a basic formula was in place which varied little from the second Death Wish movie onward. First, Charles Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, would have a relative or close friend murdered by street scum. Further mayhem would befall ancillary characters so as to goad Kersey into a righteous killing frenzy. One significant variation that this formula allowed is that in each succeeding movie the weaponry Kersey will use to blow away assorted miscreants will get more and more elaborate. From the hand pistol Kersey used in the first Death Wish movie, we now get enormous elephantine hand guns that could actually kill a real elephant as well WWII Browning machine guns as well as grenade launchers by the third film. Also, the criminals Kersey is up against aren't just assorted street punks as in the first Death Wish film but now a criminal army with enough firepower to take on the Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad.
What is truly striking in the last 30 minutes of the movie is that with the mayhem going on, the government didn't force the issue and send in the US Army to restore order as the Union Army did do in New York during the Draft Riots of 1863 while the Civil War was going on. Another priceless moment in the film is the ease with which Kersey is able to receive serious ordinance through the US mail. If it really was as easy as shown in the film, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations really missed an opportunity in arming themselves in the US.
Like I said, the film defines improbable to extremely unlikely. It's a revenge fantasy of truly baroque extremes and frankly enjoyable on that level. In the Death Wish world, there is no moral ambiguity. There are good decent people and then there are street scum. Here, the street scum harass, maim and kill the decent and the police are oddly helpless. Even though the criminals are dressed so garishly and distinctively from the characters who are good and decent, no one seems able to obtain any evidence against them. So, the only solution is just to shoot them dead. It's nice that the criminals in these films are all unredeemable psychopaths who dress quite distinctively so even a child could kill them with a clear conscience(as a few do in one of the many disturbing scenes at the end during the big shoot-out). In sum, not total trash, not really good, fascistic in a really simple-minded way (for a more complex pro-fascistic perspective, I recommend viewing the Depression political fantasy film, Gabriel over the White House, from 1933) that doesn't go beyond offering shooting street scum like turkeys as a way to solve crime but undeniably exciting.
What is truly striking in the last 30 minutes of the movie is that with the mayhem going on, the government didn't force the issue and send in the US Army to restore order as the Union Army did do in New York during the Draft Riots of 1863 while the Civil War was going on. Another priceless moment in the film is the ease with which Kersey is able to receive serious ordinance through the US mail. If it really was as easy as shown in the film, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations really missed an opportunity in arming themselves in the US.
Like I said, the film defines improbable to extremely unlikely. It's a revenge fantasy of truly baroque extremes and frankly enjoyable on that level. In the Death Wish world, there is no moral ambiguity. There are good decent people and then there are street scum. Here, the street scum harass, maim and kill the decent and the police are oddly helpless. Even though the criminals are dressed so garishly and distinctively from the characters who are good and decent, no one seems able to obtain any evidence against them. So, the only solution is just to shoot them dead. It's nice that the criminals in these films are all unredeemable psychopaths who dress quite distinctively so even a child could kill them with a clear conscience(as a few do in one of the many disturbing scenes at the end during the big shoot-out). In sum, not total trash, not really good, fascistic in a really simple-minded way (for a more complex pro-fascistic perspective, I recommend viewing the Depression political fantasy film, Gabriel over the White House, from 1933) that doesn't go beyond offering shooting street scum like turkeys as a way to solve crime but undeniably exciting.