Death Wish 3 - Die Rächer von New York

Undoubtedly, for many people, replacing the legal system with a self-proclaimed vigilante with a gun in his hands is probably a compelling idea, and sometimes you cannot resist it when you watch, for example, Muslim kids trashing French streets. But that road leads nowhere, and hand in hand with Bronson, who at 64 is trying in vain to pretend he's up to it (and it's a sad sight), it's ultimately a pretty dull cinematic affair that not even a rocket launcher can save. I'm no stranger to the poetics of ‘surreal 80's movie massacres’, but the fact that in this one an architect kills about fifty bastards with his bare hands certainly doesn't tug at my heartstrings. (03.05.2003)

As the defender of conservative American values on home soil, Charles Bronson returns to New York and this time, with the entirely open support of the police, launches a war against hooligans. The third escapade of Paul Kersey’s avenger offers up a casting concept, later adopted by Tomáš Magnusek, in which youths and non-actors in the roles of punks are pitted against award-winning veteran actors. Like Delta Force, another Cannon Films hit of the time, Death Wish 3 attracted attention due to the fact that it exploits actual events that stirred society, though it revised and exaggerated reality for ideological purposes. The unmentioned inspiration for the film was an incident that occurred on 22 December 1984, when Bernhard Goetz shot four young men who had tried to rob him in the New York subway. The incident became the embodiment of the mood among the residents of New York, which at the beginning of the 1980s was considered to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and sparked debates over the right to bear arms and self-defence. This trash fantasy with Bronson in the lead role is an entirely overt celebration of the right to bear arms and, in its individual scenes, directly highlights how beneficial it can be for urban communities when their members are armed. Bronson’s adoration for large-calibre weapons borders not only on blatant advertising, but also on perverse fetishism and clear Freudian compensation in other areas. Thanks to its exquisite lack of reason and its overt radicalism, as well as the bombastically heroic screenplay, Death Wish 3 is the most straightforward, entertaining and absurd instalment of the franchise. (03.09.2015)

It's a bit outdated, because it's actually just repeating the same theme, except that here Paul Kersey goes to jail for a while, but for something he didn't do, which is pretty ironic. Acting-wise, it's dry again, as Charles Bronson himself indicates, and plot-wise it's probably not surprising, it's just bigger, and there are more explosions and shooting. (27.03.2018)