Death Wish 3 Blu-ray Review
Death Wish 3: Revenge of the Elderly
Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, August 16, 2012
A former coal-miner, B-29 gunner during WWII, and star of
wacky Japanese
commercials—follow that link, you won't regret it—Charles Bronson is best known, of course, as an onscreen badass, a pistol-wielding action hero
who was making chumps quake in their shoes long before Schwarzenegger and Stallone and Willis. He was one of
The Dirty Dozen. He played
a mean harmonica in
Once Upon a Time in the West. And, with 1974's
Death Wish, he attained pop culture icon status for his
portrayal of Paul Kersey, a mild-mannered New York architect who goes on a violent crime-fighting rampage after thugs rape his daughter and murder
his wife. The film addresses the rotten core of the Big Apple, which was experiencing a nascent crime wave at the time, and it became controversial for
seemingly advocating that citizens take the law into their own hands.
Along with a few alleged copycat acts of vigilantism,
Death Wish launched a franchise that spanned four sequels of mostly diminishing quality,
with Kersey finding himself in ever more contrived revenge scenarios. Although they pale next to the original and have aged rather gracelessly—the
street-punk fashion, for instance, is an unintentional laugh riot—the sequels are solidly entertaining in an ironic, so-bad-it's-good, what-the-hell-were-
we-thinking-in-the-1980s kind of way. This week, MGM is releasing
Death Wish 2,
Death Wish 3, and
Death Wish 4: The
Crackdown on Blu-ray, and I already know what you're going to ask: Where are the first and last films? Good question, and one with a ready
answer. Paramount holds the rights to
Death Wish—they seem to be in no hurry to get a high definition edition out—and
Death Wish
V is currently licensed by Lionsgate. This leaves the middle three films, which have been sitting for some time in MGM's back catalog but are now
loosed on the streets again, with new 1080p transfers this time, and presented in their intended aspect ratio.
Death Wish 3 is simultaneously the worst and best of the sequels. Worst, because it casts off any semblance of seriousness or believability,
and best
for the exact same reasons. By this point, Charles Bronson's Kersey is a bit like Jack Bauer on TV's
24—it seems insane that
one man could be so constantly embroiled in trouble. After the remainder of his family is killed off in
Death Wish 2, Kersey returns to New York
—the setting of the first film—this time to visit Charley, a "Korean War buddy" in the Bronx. Surprise, surprise, he arrives just minutes after his pal has
been attacked by a bunch of hooligans who are extorting money from the local elderly population in exchange for "protection." You know, from the
punks themselves. Charley dies in Kersey's arms, and our mustachioed hero is wrongfully arrested by the cops for the crime. At the police station, Chief
Shriker (Ed Lauter) remembers Kersey as "Mr. Vigilante" and—since the city is helplessly overrun by gangs—frees him and offers him a deal: "Do your
thing, but you report to me."
Kersey does his thing indeed, and this entry in the franchise is the most violent by far, the kill-em-all retribution taken to comically extreme levels.
Setting up a neighborhood watch of sorts, Kersey moves into Charley's old apartment—it's "paid through the end of the month"—in a building
populated by the old and helpless, including a Jewish couple who take a shine to him, and the WWII vet Bennet Cross (
Psycho's Martin
Balsam), who has a Browning M1919 .30-caliber machine gun in his closet. If there's a more blindingly obvious example of "Chekhov's Gun" in a film, I
haven't seen it, and when the beast of a weapon is finally pulled out, you can bet it's used to mow down baddies with extreme prejudice and
unintentional hilarity.
The core gimmick of the film is that Kersey tempts the neighborhood's criminals—with a brand-new car, and later an expensive camera—then cold-
bloodedly kills them when they take the bait. He also does some
Home Alone-style trap-setting, putting a board with protruding nails on the
floor directly below an open window that's practically a burglar's invitation. The situation escalates, however, when a young hispanic woman is raped
and killed—basically, a reshoot of the unsettling sexual assault from
Death Wish 2—and Kersey's potential love interest, Kathryn (Deborah
Raffin), dies in a car accident caused by gang leader Manny Fraker (Gavin O'Herlihy). Fraker sports what may be the dumbest haircut ever captured on
film, a sort of reverse-mohawk, with a line shaved straight down the middle of his otherwise hair-covered head. He does a lot of maniacal glowering,
but that's as dynamic as his character gets. As for Bronson, he's clearly going through the revenge-murder motions, with little of the intensity he
brought to the first movie.
What
Death Wish 3 has over its predecessors is a deliriously absurd last act, a thirty minute sequence where ghetto Bronx is turned into an
outright war zone. When Fraker calls in biker/punk reinforcements, the elderly residents of the block—led by Kersey and that Browning machine gun—
rise up and deliver geriatric retribution. It's like
Cocoon meets
Gangs of New York, only really, really terrible. And entertaining. You
can't say this oldsters-versus-punks premise isn't laughable fun. Grenades blow the storefronts out of buildings. Guys in the most ridiculous, sub-
The Warriors outfits—a studded belt with grey sweatpants? really?—go prancing through the street wielding bike chains and tire irons. And
then there's Bronson, grimacing as he looses rapid-fire hot lead on anyone who gets in his way. At one point, he
mail orders a LARS anti-tank
missile launcher with self-propelled armor-piercing rounds, and uses it to explode one baddie through a wall. I don't care how awful the film is
otherwise; it's worth it for the are-you-kidding-me quality of the ending.
Death Wish 3 Blu-ray, Video Quality
Let's start by acknowledging that the
Death Wish films have never and—unless there's some picture quality witchery I don't yet know about—
will never look particularly sharp or slick. Not by modern standards. These were fairly low-budget productions, shot non-anamorphically on fast
and heavily grainy 35mm stock, and short of slathering the picture with detail-smearing DNR—which would be a very bad thing indeed—there's not
much that can be done to separate the
content of the image from it's noisy medium. MGM has wisely steered clear of unnecessary digital
tinkering, doing only what's needed to get the films in strong high definition shape. I'm not sure how much restoration/clean-up was required, but the
prints of all three
Death Wish films are practically spotless, with few—if any—white specks, and no scratches, stains, or debris. And while the
movies have been placed on single-layer 25 GB discs, I didn't spot any overt compression issues. To my eye, these transfers look faithful to source.
Presented in its intended aspect ratio, with a 1080p/AVC encode,
Death Watch 3 looks the best out of the three Bronson films released this
week, which makes some sense considering this particular production had the highest budget. There's still some softness to the image—owing to the
way the film was shot—but fine textures and lines seem slightly better resolved here than in
Death Wish 2, and clarity gets a solid all-around
bump from MGM's now-ancient DVD. Color seems accurate and stable, with no obvious fading or fluctuations, and contrast is spot-on for a film of this
particular vintage. Even in darker scenes there's plenty of visible shadow detail. The film looks like what it is—a B-level exploitation pic—but that's not
such a bad thing, is it?
Death Wish 3 Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Cheaply shot and churned out, Cannon Films productions in general were rarely given much audio polish. Although stereo and even multi-channel mixes
were already common when the movies were made, all three
Death Wish films released this week by MGM are in mono, via lossless DTS-HD
Master Audio 1.0 tracks. Considering all of the gunfire, explosions, and car crashes, you can easily imagine these films in 5.1, with immersive ambience
and directional effects galore, but you can't dock MGM for being true-to-source. All three films have rather flat dynamics, with tempered bass, a soft high
end, and much of the audio packed into the mids. Gunshots are typically wimpy, and most of the effects clearly sound canned, but there's some low-
budget B-movie charm here in the rinky-dink presentation. Jimmie Page's score from
Death Wish 2 was recycled almost in its entirety here—
with the additional of some stock cues from Mike Moran—and the music is decently clear and potent, though limited by the mono output. Dialogue is
always understandable, but if you need or want them, the disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, along with a French Dolby Digital 1.0
dub.
