6/6/15 (Part Three): Making Wrongs Equal a Right

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'80s action films, '80s films, action films, Anthony Franciosa, auteur theory, Ben Frank, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime thriller, David Engelbach, Death Wish, Death Wish 2, director-editor, E. Lamont Johnson, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, gang rape, Golan-Globus, Jill Ireland, Jimmy Page, Kevyn Major Howard, Laurence Fishburne, Menahem Golan, Michael Winner, Movies, Paul Kersey, rape, rape-revenge films, Richard H. Kline, Robin Sherwood, sequels, set in Los Angeles, Silvana Gallardo, street gangs, Stuart K. Robinson, Thomas Duffy, thrillers, Tom Del Ruth, vigilante, vigilantism, Vincent Gardenia, Yoram Globus

When we last left everyone’s favorite vigilante, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), he had just finished avenging the rape of his daughter and murder of his wife by blasting half the criminal population of New York City straight to kingdom come. After being given a one-way ticket to Chicago by the NYPD (rather than reveal their complicity in not locking him up), we get the notion that Kersey won’t be any less forgiving to the Windy City’s scum than he was to the Big Apple’s. What’s a guy like this do for an encore?

As it turns out, he goes to Disneyland. Well, not quite: he actually goes to Los Angeles, which was probably a lot closer to New York City in the dawning years of the ’80s than it might care to admit. Our lovable avenging angel’s next act, the follow-up to 1974’s Death Wish, would be Death Wish 2 (1982). As with most sequels, Death Wish 2 would attempt to up the ante on the first film, featuring a more graphic rape scene, a more cold-blooded vigilante and a more over-the-top, ineffectual police force. The film would feature the same director, action-auteur Michael Winner, and a musical score by Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page that featured more guitar solos than a ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition. Death Wish 2 would also do something a little more insidious: by jettisoning Kersey’s previous moral quandaries, the film would place its sympathies almost wholly in the Dirty Harry (1971) school of “shoot first, ask questions later.” Rising crime rates…street gangs…the average citizen running in terror from armed lawlessness? Welcome to the ’80s, Paul: enjoy your stay!

When we meet Paul Kersey again, not much has changed since the fist time, aside from the location. He’s still an architect, he’s still taking care of traumatized daughter, Carol (Robin Sherwood) and he’s still got a romantic interest, albeit a new one: reporter Geri Nichols (Bronson’s real-life spouse, Jill Ireland). He’s also the same take-no-shit asskicker that he was before, as we see when he runs afoul of a highly colorful gang of street toughs, led by the squirrely Nirvana (Thomas Duffy) and counting one Laurence Fishbourne III among their august ranks (his absolutely insane sci-fi shades deserve their own film franchise, perhaps some kind of interstellar private-eye thriller).

The gang lifts Paul’s wallet and decides to head to his place to enact a little “justice” over his rough treatment of Jiver (Stuart K. Robinson). When they don’t find Paul at home, they opt for gang-raping his housekeeper, Rosario (Silvana Gallardo), in what has to be one of the most vile, protracted and gratuitous rape scenes in the history of cinema. When Paul and Carol return, the gang knocks him unconscious, shoots Rosario dead and takes Carol captive. After yet another gratuitous rape scene, Carol jumps through a plate-glass window and ends up impaled on a wrought-iron fence. Needless to say, this sequence of events pushes poor Paul over the edge and he takes to the streets once again, intent on hunting down and slaughtering the animals responsible for brutalizing Rosario and Carol.

To complicate matters, the same NYPD chain-of-command who let Kersey go in the first movie get wind of his recent activities in L.A. and begin to get a little worried: if Kersey gets caught, he might decide to blab about the NYPD opting to shuffle him out of town rather than do the paperwork. In order to prevent this, they send Detective Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia), Kersey’s foil from the first film, to Los Angeles in order to permanently deal with the problem. The only problem, of course, is that Ochoa doesn’t necessarily think Paul’s doing anything wrong. Neither do the citizens of L.A., for that matter, as they cheer on their vigilante hero in the same way that the New Yorkers did almost a decade earlier. Will Paul put down his weapons of war before he loses the rest of his humanity or have the bad guys pushed him too far this time? One thing’s for sure: the scum of Los Angeles have a death wish…and Paul Kersey’s just the guy to grant it.

One of the biggest issues involving sequels is usually the disparity between the first and second films in a series: in many cases, different creative personnel handle the various films, particularly if they were never conceived as a unified “series” in the first place. Death Wish 2 avoids this pitfall, in part, by having Michael Winner return as director: both Death Wish 2 and its predecessor share a similar aesthetic and feel (despite swapping the first film’s cinematographer, Arthur J. Ornitz, for Part 2’s team of Tom Del Ruth and Richard H. Kline) which definitely helps to weld the films together. Unlike the completely over-the-top Death Wish 3 (1985), the second film still has enough of the first’s DNA to seem like a natural succession rather than just another product.

As mentioned earlier, however, Death Wish 2 certainly fulfills the stereotype of sequels in one big way: there’s more, more and more of absolutely everything here. While the rape scenes are more prolonged and nasty than the first film, the personalities of the various gang members are also bigger and more outrageous than the original. Keyvn Major Howard’s “hardcore Hare Krishna,” Stomper, could have been lifted directly from The Road Warrior (1981), while Thomas Duffy’s Nirvana gets one particularly ludicrous bit where he plows through several dozen cops as if he were an exceptionally pale version of the Incredible Hulk. While the gang from the first movie (which included an appropriately bug-eyed Jeff Goldblum) weren’t exactly the picture of restraint, the creepoids in Part 2 are one slim pen stroke away from complete comic book territory.

The political commentary is also much more pointed and one-sided than in the previous film. Gone are Paul’s “bleeding-heart liberalisms,” replaced by the kind of steely-eyed disdain for criminal lives (and rights) that mark any good ’80s crime fighter. Right from the get-go, we get talking heads and worried news reports that not only talk about the escalating crime rates but compare the whole situation to “being struck by an enemy bomb.” This is war, according to the film, and it’s us or the bad guys. Unlike the first film, there’s no need for hemming and hawing on Kersey’s part: he already did the heavy emotional lifting last time…all he has to do, here, is load the gun and pull the trigger, as many times as necessary.

Not only is Death Wish 2 a much nastier film than its predecessor but it also marked a shift in Bronson’s career from his earlier tough-guy ’70s roles into films that were much bleaker, more explicit and all-around more unpleasant. After Death Wish 2, Bronson would go on to 10 To Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), Death Wish 3 (1985) and Kinjite (1989), all regarded as some of the nastiest “mainstream” thrillers to hit in an altogether over-the-top decade.

Despite my lifelong appreciation for Death Wish 3 (oddly enough, it was one of the films that my father and I found ourselves watching the most, over the years, possibly due to the overt cartoonishness of it all), I’ll readily admit that Death Wish 2 is the better film. In many ways, I equate the first two films in this series to the first two films in the Halloween series. Carpenter’s original, like the first Death Wish, was a lean, mean statement of purpose, a film that was just as much art as exploitation, with very few frills and a simple, but effective, structure. Halloween II (1981), like Death Wish 2, has a very similar aesthetic to its predecessor yet manages to be much bleaker, more explicit and, arguably, less fun. The direct sequels also added storylines that made the inherent structure more complex, if not necessarily better (the Det. Ochoa bit never really amounts to anything and is, in and of itself, a pretty massive plot-hole), something that’s also par for the course with most sequels.

At the end of the day, Death Wish 2, like its predecessor and the vast majority of these ultra-grim and graphic ’80s crime thrillers, is always going to be an acquired taste. Whereas the Dirty Harry series always traded on Eastwood’s ever-present snark and way with a quip, the Death Wish series (at least for the first few entries) was a much more dour affair. While both series’ trade on the notion of a world run rampant and in serious need of an ass whuppin’, the underlying point behind the Death Wish series seems to be thus: your loved ones will be cut down in front of you, no one will help and it will be up to you to avenge them. In many ways, it’s easy to see the character of Dirty Harry as being a sort of right-wing superhero (for the record, despite any personal inclinations, Dirty Harry will always be one of my personal heroes), while the character of Paul Kersey is much muddier and more complex.

When he started out, Paul didn’t want to kill but felt he had no choice. Here, we get the first inclinations that he’s begun to develop a taste for it. By the time we get to the third film, where he gleefully blows a reverse-mohawked punk through the side of a building with a rocket launcher, we’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s getting a kick out of it. Is that progress? I’ll let you be the judge.

2/2/15 (Part Two): No Justice…Just Us

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Alejandra Yañez, Alejandro Fernández Almendras, Ariel Mateluna, based on a true story, bullies, Cape Fear, Chilean films, cinema, Daniel Antivilo, Daniel Candia, Death Wish, divorced parents, family, family in crisis, father-son relationships, fighting back, film reviews, films, foreign films, forest ranger, guilt, harassment, ineffectual cops, Inti Briones, Jennifer Salas, justice, masculinity, Movies, Pablo Vergara, rape, revenge, set in Chile, Straw Dogs, thugs, To Kill a Man, vigilante, vigilantism, writer-director-editor

Most of the time, cinematic evil is pretty flashy, memorable and, let’s face it, kinda cool: it’s the Bond super-villain plotting the world’s destruction from the comfort of his high-tech, fortified island estate…the suave, dastardly mustache-twirler butting heads with the hardy hero…the badass monster with acid for blood and a hankering for humans…the evil genius who’s constantly building killer robots, turning people into zombies and infecting the water supply with some sort of designer mega-virus. Take a minute to think about which characters in any Nightmare on Elm Street film are more interesting: the bland, anonymous victims or wise-crackin’, ultra-cool Freddy? Evil may be something to overcome (most of the time) but that doesn’t mean it can’t be gussied up with some sweet duds and an enviable haircut.

In the real world, however, true evil is rarely as “cool” as movies make it out to be. In fact, true evil, for the most part, is exceptionally banal: it’s the bureaucrat moving “casualties” from one column to the next…the terrorist who kills based on dogma…the egomaniacal dictator who rules by virtue of having the most guns, not the best plan…the bored thrill-seekers just looking for something to do…the bullies who indiscriminately target the weak in an effort to make someone’s, anyone’s life more miserable than their own…the fat cats who relentlessly pad their own wallets at the expense of those around them…the companies dumping pollutants into the water and air. Real evil, for the most part, is boring, beige. True evil is also all but impossible to eradicate: you may be able to send in Rambo or Jason Bourne to take care of the cinematic baddies but it doesn’t work quite like that in the real world. Most of us are in no position to eliminate the day-to-day evils of the world: evil, like good, is just a fact of life.

Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ To Kill a Man (2014), which the Chilean director also wrote and edited, takes us right into the thick of real evil, showcasing the casual cruelty, misanthropy and harassment that often leads to violence, heart-break and death. There are no heroes here, just a desperate, broken-down father who tries (and fails) to protect his family. There are no super-villains, either, no suave harbingers of cool chaos for us to vicariously live through: the evil in To Kill a Man is earth-bound, sweaty, stupid and ugly, the product of generations of degradation, not a special serum or radioactive infection. There is nothing rousing, fist-raising or “epic” about the fight between good and evil in Almendras’ film: this is real evil, in all of its slouching, misshapen glory. There are no happy endings here because, in the real world, evil is seldom vanquished: it simply returns to the soil, like so much rot, in order to spring anew elsewhere. By removing feel-good notions of cosmic justice and the supposed balance between good and evil, Almendras lifts up the rock that is our world and let the hidden things spill out into the light: in the process, he creates one of the most powerful, tense and unpleasant films of the year, a funeral dirge for our modern age.

The protagonist of our little film, Jorge (Daniel Candia), is a mild-mannered forest ranger, father of two and loving husband. He’s soft-spoken, diabetic, gets his family whatever they want at the drop of a hat and seems like a genuinely nice guy. As with Paul Kersey in Death Wish (1974), however, this is not the kind of world for a meek, kind-hearted push-over: this is the jungle and the weaker animals are always prey for the stronger. In this case, the stronger animal is one Luis Alberto Alamos Alamos (Daniel Antivilo), also known as Kalule. Kalule and his gang of reprobates have recently taken over a small park in Jorge’s neighborhood and currently “rule” with an iron fist. No one is safe from their harassment, petty larceny and thuggish violence: think a meaner, stupider and crasser version of Alex’s droogs and you’ve on the right track.

One night, while passing through the park on his way home from work, Jorge happens to run afoul of Kalule and his “boys.” At first, the thugs just harass the poor guy, kicking a soccer ball at him, calling him names and cheerfully menacing him. When Jorge is forced to go back through the park later, however, in order to buy his son, Jorge (Ariel Mateluna) and his friends some beer, his second meeting with the gang isn’t quite as “pleasant.” The creeps surround Jorge, push him around and snatch his wallet, taking what they want and throwing the rest into the dirt. The scene is terrible and humiliating, with Jorge as defenseless as a small child, despite his status as patriarch of his household. To add insult to injury, Kalule refuses to take Jorge’s credit card (“I’d probably have to pay your bill,” he laughs) but does take the expensive blood tester that Jorge needs to help control his diabetes.

When Jorge gets home, he’s too devastated to even look his family in the eyes. His wife, Marta (Alejandra Yañez), and daughter, Nicole (Jennifer Salas), seem mortified and his son is pissed off and ready for action: he wants his dad to give him 5000 pesos so that he can go to the gang and, at the very least, negotiate the return of his dad’s tester. Jorge tells him to drop it which, of course, has the opposite desired effect: young Jorge sneaks out while his parents sleep and attempts to get his dad’s stuff back. When he finds out, Jorge rushes after his son, only to get to his side right after Kalule has shot him. While he watches, Kalule calmly shoots himself and then calls the police, claiming that Jorge’s son attacked him and he only shot in self-defense.

At the trial, Kalule continues to plead his innocence, even as he accepts a plea deal that would put him in prison for 1.5 years. Jorge’s family, for their part, is heartbroken: young Jorge has survived but his injuries have put an end to his schooling, dooming him to the same sort of lower-class life as his parents. Marta, meanwhile, has never stopped blaming Jorge for their son’s injury and the couple have since divorced, with the kids staying with their mother and Jorge taking up residence in a flea-bag motel. Faster than you can say “Cape Fear (1991),” however, Kalule is out of jail and looking to even the score with Jorge and his family. The thug begins a campaign of terror and harassment against the family that includes obscene phone calls, throwing rocks at their house and stalking young Nicole everywhere she goes. The police, so unhelpful during the original crime, are just as unhelpful now: regardless of how many complaints the family lodges, how many protection orders they get or how much they try to avoid Kalule and his gang, the authorities merely shrug their shoulders, leaving the family completely on their own.

As the pressure begins to wear on him, Jorge finds himself changing in subtle ways. After a confrontation with an asshole in the forest ends with Jorge chasing him off with a shotgun, however, the beleaguered father begins to feel empowered, if only ever so slightly. After Kalule and his men commit a shocking, vile and humiliating act against his daughter, however, Jorge finds himself at a crossroads: will he be able to continue taking the “high road,” hoping that the police will eventually do their job, or will he take matters into his own hands and try to make his own version of “justice?” When he finally does make a choice, Jorge’s decision will have a terrible, lasting impact on all those around him: there are no winners, here, only various shades of losers and wrecked human beings.

Lean, mean and consistently down-trodden, To Kill a Man is one of the finest examples of “feel bad” cinema I’ve seen in some time. Everything about the film is calculatedly to make the viewer feel as tense and uncomfortable as possible: the ominous score, all deep-voiced wind instruments and droning, low tones crawls under your skin and stays there…the violence, when it happens, is sudden, shocking and all-too realistic…the gang seem all-powerful and absolutely immoral, lending the film an overriding sense of futility…in every way possible, To Kill a Man is the epitome of a stacked deck.

Jorge, as portrayed by Candia, is a sympathetic, yet largely pathetic, character, a man who wants to believe in some notion of balance and justice yet keeps getting kicked in the nuts by the universe at every turn. Yañez, for her part, serves as surrogate for anyone taking the view that bullies need to be stood up to: the scene where Marta sneers at Jorge and warns him to beware of “mean kids in the park” is a real heart-breaker, since it just reinforces the notion that Jorge was too weak and not “masculine enough” to protect his family. We witness young Jorge go from the traditionally supportive son to a bitter, jaded shell of a man who holds his father in the same contempt that his mother does. And poor Nicole, so hopeful and positive, is absolutely destroyed by the violence and misogyny that swirls around her like a toxic cloud. This isn’t a family so much as three horses which, along with Kalule, are striving to pull Jorge to pieces.

While the acting is consistently strong and nicely understated, the cinematography, courtesy of Inti Briones, is a real thing of beauty. Time after time, Briones comes up with some truly gorgeous images: the shot of an automatic door slowly closing, only to stop midway, works on a number of levels, as does the awesome shot of Jorge’s truck disappearing backwards into the night, its wan headlights gradually swallowed in the same manner as Jorge’s rapidly dwindling humanity. The sense of framing is exquisite and the frequent close-ups, shot from odd angles, keep the constantly shifting power relationships as off-kilter as possible. As difficult as To Kill a Man is to sit through, content-wise, the film always looks and sounds amazing, a razor blade wrapped in a candy shell.

Ultimately, I was pretty blown away by Almendras’ film: while I’ve never been the biggest fan of what I like to call “hopeless cinema,” it’s impossible to deny the raw power of To Kill a Man. In many ways, the film is a modern successor to Death Wish, a searing, jagged examination of the destructive power of vengeance and what it means to be a “protector” in these violent times. While Jorge’s measured march to his own annihilation is painful to watch, it’s the kind of pain that any cinephile should force themselves to endure. At its core, To Kill a Man peels back humanity’s skin, revealing the coal-black heart that beats beneath. You may not necessarily “enjoy” the film but truth, like life, is often painful. Sometimes, you need that pain to appreciate everything else. Sometimes, that’s all there is.

6/2/14 (Part Two): From the Sublime to the Rocket Launcher

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'80s action films, 1980's, action films, Alex Winter, Assault on Precinct 13, bad cops, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime wave, Death Wish, Death Wish 3, Deborah Raffin, Ed Lauter, film franchise, film reviews, films, Fraker, gang rape, gangs of punks, Gavan O'Herlihy, gun enthusiasts, guns, Jimmy Page, Kirk Taylor, liberals vs conservatives, Mad Max, Marina Sirtis, Martin Balsam, Michael Winner, misogyny, Movies, New York City, over-the-top, Paul Kersey, post-apocalyptic wasteland, revenge, rocket launcher, sequel, sequels, set in the 1980's, the Giggler, The Warriors, Tony Spiridakis, Troma films, vengeance, vigilante, vigilantism

As a youth, many of my favorite films tended to be of the ultra-violent action variety. While I watched a lot of different things, there was a certain group of films that seemed to get rewatched endlessly, as if on a loop: Magnum Force (1973), Pale Rider (1985), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Death Wish 3 (1985), RoboCop (1987) and Die Hard (1988). Most of these could probably be chalked up to the fact that Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson were two of my parents’ favorite actors, thereby gaining plenty of airtime in our household. As for RoboCop and Die Hard: what 11-year-old boy wouldn’t love those? As time passes, I find that my opinion on most of them still holds up: for one reason or another, these are all fundamentally solid films.

Of the group, Death Wish 3 is one of the ones I watched the most, while younger, but have revisited the least as time goes on. As part of my personal film festival, I decided to finally revisit the film, pairing it with the original (if I had access to the second film and hadn’t just watched the fourth a few months back, this would have been the whole quadrilogy). As seen in my previous entry, I found that the original Death Wish (1974) still holds up some forty years later, retaining lots of subtle power among the flying bullets. How, then, would one of my formerly favorite films hold up? Journey behind the curtain and let’s find out.

As far as genre franchises go, the Death Wish series actually tells a continual story, give or take the rather large lapses in time between the first and third entries (8 years). In the first, we were introduced to the character of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), a mild-mannered, pacifistic New York City architect who becomes a vigilante after a gang of punks rape his daughter and kill his wife. The second film continues the storyline as Kersey and his daughter, Carol, move to Los Angeles in order to start a new life. After Carol is once again attacked and ends up killing herself, Paul picks up his revolver and hunts down the creeps responsible. By the end of the film, we see Paul all alone, the last of his family gone: the assumption is that he will continue to hunt the streets, cleaning up the criminal element. Since there ended up being a third (and fourth) film, that assumption would be right on the nose.

After some time has passed, “legendary” vigilante Paul Kersey boards a bus and returns to New York City, the place where it all began. He’s on his way to visit an old war buddy, Charley (Francis Drake), but this isn’t the same New York City from a decade before: this is the ’80s, baby, and shit’s bad…real bad. It seems that roving gangs of punks, similar to the creepazoids from Max Max (1979) or Troma’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), have taken over the city and Paul gets to his friend’s apartment just after the punks have beaten him nearly to death. Charley dies, the cops burst in and Paul is hauled off to the station house for a little good-natured “interrogation.”

Once there, Paul catches the eye of Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter), who just happened to be a beat cop when Paul went on his initial “cleaning” spree in NYC. Seems that Shriker is fighting a losing battle against the punks on the street and he needs something that his entire police force can’t provide: he needs the “bad guys” to start dying. Shriker knows that Paul used to handle that particular “job” quite handily and offers him a deal: he can return to the streets, killing as many punks, criminals and ’80s metal-heads as he wants, as long as he keeps Shriker in the loop and throws him a few choice busts every so often. When the alternative is a hefty jail sentence, Paul agrees: time to hit the streets, once again.

As Paul wanders the post-Apocalyptic neighborhood outside Charley’s apartment (seriously: the place is like a cross between The Warriors (1979) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) on a bad day), he starts to figure out the hierarchy. Seems that Fraker (Gavan O’Herlihy), the platinum-blonde psycho that Paul briefly encountered in lockup, is the ringleader, ruling everything with an iron fist and really sharp knife. With his gang of goons, including The Giggler (Kirk Taylor), The Cuban (Ricco Ross) and Hermosa (Alex Winter), Fraker has the entire neighborhood terrified and paying protection money in order to stay alive. It’s a bad bunch of dudes…but there’s big trouble coming.

Paul also meets the residents of Charley’s apartment building, including Charley’s best friend and fellow war vet, Bennett (Martin Balsam), Manny and Maria Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez, Marina Sirtis), Eli and Erica Kaprov (Leo Kharibian, Hana-Maria Pravda) and Mr. and Mrs. Emil (John Gabriel, Mildred Shay). To complete his merry circle of friends, Paul also becomes romantic with Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin), the attractive young public defender that he met at the police station. It would all be so lovely, of course, if Fraker wasn’t so dead-set on running Paul out of the neighborhood, one way or the other. In short order, the place becomes an absolute war-zone and death comes to visit them all: it comes for the punks, of course, because Paul is one helluva shot. It also comes for the innocents, of course, because this wouldn’t be Death Wish without a whole lotta revenge. As the body count rises on both sides of the line, one thing remains clear: Kersey ain’t leaving until he’s either outta ammo…or targets.

Right off the bat, there’s absolutely nothing subtle or subtextual about Death Wish 3 whatsoever: this film is all raging id, rampaging from one extreme to the other. Unlike the basically good but ineffectual cops from the first film, every cop in DW3 comes across as a steroid-addled, trigger-happy goon, particularly the incredibly dastardly Lt. Shriker. Hell, he was technically only one twirled mustache away from a Perils of Pauline-era villain. He bashes Paul around, snarls that he could have him killed at any time and punches him square in the face just because it’s “his” jail.

Whereas the punks from the first film weren’t exactly multi-dimensional (Jeff Goldblum’s sneering mug was about as much character development as we got), the gangs in DW3 are completely over-the-top and cartoonish. Many of them do seem to have been lifted wholesale from The Warriors, right down to the odd matching outfits for certain groups within the gang (Gang subgroups? What nightmare of micro-management is this?!) and by the time we get to the finale, where gang members ride around on motorcycles while hurling grenades willy-nilly, it will be pretty impossible to not expect Mad Max to come zooming over the horizon. Fraker is so evil that he easily surpasses Bond villains, winding up somewhere in the neighborhood devoted to Marvel villains.

In many ways, there’s definitely a consistent through-line from the first film to the third: after all, director Michael Winner was on board for the first three films and the overall message (a good man with a gun trumps a bad man with a gun) is unwavering. Where Death Wish was careful to portray both sides of the issue, even if it obviously only gave credence to one side, DW3 dispenses with this facade completely. Paul isn’t on any kind of journey in DW3: he’s already there. While the first film grappled with the disparity between wanting to defend yourself and taking revenge, there’s no question as to what needs to be done by the time the third film opens. If Death Wish and its first sequel could be seen as drama-suspense hybrids, DW3 is almost entirely an action picture. In the first film, Paul has to deal with both the police (polite society) and the criminals: the police didn’t condone his activities, they just ran him out of the city. In the third film, not only do the police condone Kersey’s vigilantism, they actively push him into it. By the time we get to the finale, where Paul and Shriker run down the street, side by side, merrily gunning down anonymous bad guys (the body count in this thing, for the gangs alone, has to be in the mid-hundreds), DW3 is the furthest thing from the original film it could possibly be. The thought-provoking, gut-quaking violence of the first film has been replaced by a Ren and Stimpy-level of carnage that certainly befits most mid-’80s action sequels but makes it impossible to take anything seriously.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the film, however, and one that continually flew over my head as a kid, is the rampant misogyny. Admittedly, the first and second films were precipitated upon the sexual assault of a young woman but they also featured peripheral female characters: in DW3, every single (good) female character is either assaulted or killed. It’s such an obvious part of the film that it’s hard to believe the filmmakers didn’t intend it but it’s unpleasant, nonetheless. ’80s action films were never known for their progressive gender politics, in the best of situations, but the female characters in DW3 all seem doomed from their introductions. When combined with the over-the-top, testosterone-fueled action sequences, the absolute lack of surviving female characters makes this very much a “boys’ club.” To be honest, it’s probably no wonder that this film appealed to me so much as a kid: this movie was pretty much made for boys in their early teens, rating be damned.

And yet, despite its inherent flaws and ham-fisted politics, there something kind of charming about Death Wish 3. The parts that I remembered loving as a kid (blowing away the purse-snatcher, Paul’s ingenious booby traps, Fraker’s delicious villainy) were just as enjoyable this time around. Sure, the film may be full of holes and uses a disturbing amount of fantasy to glide over the rough patches (the cops are nowhere to be found, while everything is blowing up, until they’re needed for the big finale, at which point they all swoop down, en masse: were they all on break or something?) but it also has a gonzo sense of energy and vitality to it. The film looks pretty great, full of rich, vibrant colors and the soundtrack, by Jimmy Page (yep, that Jimmy Page), is pretty awesome: it’s a keyboard-heavy, funky batch of tunes that perfectly evoke the theme songs to various ’80s cop shows…in the best way possible, mind you).

Unlike Death Wish, which operated in shades of gray, Death Wish 3 is very much a black-and-white film: the bad guys are all absolutely bad, the good guys are all absolutely good. Guns are not only good but absolutely necessary. When the law fails you, take measures into your own hands. There’s no room for dialogue or division here: you’re either standing with Paul, shooting at the creeps, or you’re getting shot at…simple as that. When I want to watch something thought-provoking and visceral, I’ll undoubtedly return to the original. When I want to turn my brain off and root for the white hats, however, there’s no doubt that I’ll be returning to Death Wish 3. After all, any film that features a reverse mohawk, giggling purse-snatcher and death by (close-range) rocket launcher can’t be all bad. It was the ’80s, after all.