Dude Movies: Death Wish 3

(A word of introduction: Death Wish 3 is not available for rent at Gen X. I know, right? And they call themselves a video store. Hopefully this will shame Mike into stocking what is clearly the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. - madkevin.)

What's it about?

The nearly geriatric Charles Bronson, fresh from having literally his entire extended family killed in the previous two Death Wish movies, drifts into Brooklyn only to find it overrun with roving gangs of criminals, hooligans, ne'er do wells, goons, gangsters, thugs, hoods, toughs, mobsters, punks, ruffians, troublemakers, villans, outlaws, ravagers, racketeers, barbarians, vandals, scofflaws, desperados, vandals, hustlers, wrongdoers, and Gavan O'Herlihy.*

Any chicks in the movie?

Not just any chick, but Marina Sirtis, aka Deanna Troy from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thankfully, her character doesn't speak English in Death Wish 3, so you never have to hear her tell Bronson that she "senses danger".** Good news: You get to see her naked! Bad news: She gets raped to death.

Awesomeness factor?

Unquantifiable. Some movies are bad. Some movies are so bad that they start to become entertaining. Then there's Death Wish 3, a movie so indescribably, painfully dreadful it rips through the very fabric of space-time itself to become possibly the most brilliant movie ever made. There's no sense in treating Death Wish 3 like a normal movie made by sane human people, so I'm just going to break it down into bullet points:

1) The score is done by Jimmy Page. Yes, that Jimmy Page. Which you'd think would be cool, right? Unfortunately, this was Jimmy Page during some weird period in the mid-80s when he said to himself "I wonder what these synthesizer thingimabobs are all about?" So it's a score composed mainly of tone-deaf run-throughs of various Roland patch settings which I'm sure sounded really avant-garde to Jimmy but comes across like Tangerine Dream smashing keyboards with their foreheads while kicking a guitar with their feet.

2) Charles Bronson was sixty-four years old when he made Death Wish 3. Now, don't get me wrong: I love Charles Bronson. Once Upon A Time In The West is the best Western ever, period, end declarative statement. We're talking about a dude who was a Magnificent Seven, a Dirty Dozen and a Great Escaper. But Chuck wasn't exactly spry even in his prime, and by 1985 he was looking and moving like, well, a dude in his 60s. This does not phase Death Wish 3 which, after all, was made at the absolute height of of Reaganism. Most of the crop of revenge pictures made in the wake of the success of the original Death Wish were not-so-lightly veiled racist wish fufillment fantasies - wouldn't those inner cities be awesome if we could get rid of all those unsightly minorities? Death Wish 3, on the other hand, embraces minorites... just as long as they're as old as Chuck. Which brings me to point number three:

3) Death Wish 3 is action movie porn for senior citizens. OK, so Chuck shows up in Brooklyn, which in the weirdo universe of the movie is being over-run by a gang seemingly culled from Pat Benatar's gang in the "Love Is A Battlefield" video: lots of young people wearing bandanas, cut-off sleeve denim vests and that super-gay styling Hollywood gives actors when they want to signify "punk" but the actors don't want to get an actual haircut. For some reason, this gang acts like they're eight years old, openly hassling women and non-gang dudes by throwing rocks at them and other acts better suited to Dennis The Menace. The Warriors they ain't, is what I'm saying. Meanwhile, literally every other character in the movie is either a scared-but-proud minority, a senior citizen, or both***. There's an old Jewish couple in the movie that is so old and so Jewish that you keep expecting Zero Mostel to sell them shares in Springtime For Hitler. When Chuck starts cleaning up the town, it isn't revenge so much as open disgust at the young people of today (of 1985), with their hair and their music and their hipitty-hopping and their potty mouths. Chuck'll wash that mouth out, young man. With bullets.

4) And then there's this:

Note that the bald guy with him? The "I owed you one, dood!" guy? He's supposed to be a cop. Eat it, Miranda rights!

Anyway, this is already the longest review I've ever written and I didn't even talk about Martin Balsalm, Alex "Bill From Bill & Ted" Winter, or Bronson's excellent choice in weaponry. Some things you just owe it to yourself to watch.

Mitigating Factor?

Do not, under any circumstances, watch Death Wish 4. You have been warned.

* Of all the myraid of reasons to watch Death Wish 3, Gavan O'Herlihy should be right at the very top. The dude sports a reverse mohawk with Adam Ant facepaint and a big red stripe down the center of his shaved skull, so that he literally resembles a dickhead. As in, he looks like he has a dick for a head. People talk about fearless actors, but you don't see Philip Seymour Hoffman walking around as Penishead.

** I mean, seriously. The Enterprise is surrounded by fucking Romulan warships or whatever and you sense danger? Well no shit, Kreskin. Way to contribute to the team.

*** OK, not quite. There's also the lawyer played by Deborah Raffin (who, by the way, has the best imdb page ever: Jacqueline Susan's Once Is Not Enough! Larry Cohen's God Told Me To! The Goldie Hawn replacement for the TV series of Foul Play! Scanners II: The New Order! What, American Ninja to good for you?) who exists in the movie as the most perfunctory love interest imaginable for Chuckles. Even Death Wish 3 understands that nobody in the entire known universe wants to see Chuck get it on, no matter how comely the lass, so the love scene tastefully blacks out before you see any of Chuck's, um, folds. Not so tastefully, the very next scene shows Raffin in a car saying something like "Aren't you glad you let me in?" when Chuck turns away for a second, giving O'Herlihy an opening to run up to the car, punch her full in the face and put the car in neutral, causing it roll down a hill, smash into another car and EXPLODE.

Wendy's Films of 2010 #36: Good Hair (2009)

Chris Rock's documentary on what exactly "good hair" means to African-Americans sheds light on the incredible amount of effort, time and money put into creating a certain self-image. I never knew a weave cost upwards of $1000, or that many put dangerous chemicals into their hair to straighten it. It all began when Rock's young daughter asked her dad why she didn't have "good hair" - a question that made him wonder what that meant, and why such lengths are gone to achieve a particular image.

From the salons of Harlem to the temples of India, Rock travels far and wide to find answers and makes the purpose of his journey to inform the world of his discoveries. It's this element - the fact that Rock is discovering these details and not just expounding them - that makes the documentary so interesting. It feels like an adventure on a subject I never even thought to explore. I must admit I was shocked at his findings, and love the overall message he wishes to send: what matters is what's in the head, not on it.

Wendy's Films of 2010 #29: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)

I was slightly perplexed by this movie. It seemed to have all the components of a great film; one to inspire hope, to effect change, to shove people out of their comfort zone. But somehow I didn't feel incredibly drawn into its story. I felt like time was crawling and halfway through thought it was almost over. Just when things start to go right for Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), they go wrong again. It felt relentless to the point of losing purpose. Sure I cried, I felt angry; I was happy that she had such strength and optimism, but I didn't walk out with that feeling of having watched a really great piece of cinema.

I found out that the film was nominated for several Oscars just hours before seeing it and felt confident that the performances of Sidibe and Mo'Nique would be powerful, and they were. Sidibe is instantly likable, and I immediately sympathized with her character's awful state of being. There were other aspects of the film that I really liked, especially the fantasies Precious experiences in times of particular hardship. I was pleasantly surprised at the inclusion of a central character's same-sex relationship, and was glad that all the problems weren't neatly tied together. I really wanted to love this film, but unfortunately it seemed to lack something, or perhaps it had to much.

tm Does the QT 20 Part 14: Friday

Friday (dir. F. Gary Gray – 1995)

This is basically Dazed & Confused in Da Hood.

Taking place on a Friday, it concerns itself with Craig Jones (played by Ice Cube), who’s just been fired, apparently unjustly so, from his job; but Friday is his day off so he’s just hanging out with this buddy Smokey (Chris Tucker, in his debut) as they observe the neighbourhood – you’ve got the thug, the drug dealers, the hot woman across the road, the guys are trying to cope with parents, girlfriends, etc. The drama of the movie comes from Smokey owing a drug dealer $200 and if they don’t come up with the cash by the end of the day, there’ll be trouble.
It’s all light and funny but the last 15 minutes turn tense with a drive-by machine gunning and a no-holds barred brawl between Craig and the local bully. A funny, but all very brief cameo, by Bernie Mac makes things semi-interesting.

One question that is answered is that, yes, Chris Tucker has been mind-numbingly annoying since the very beginning; the depth of his character mostly rests on the twenty different ways he needs to say “Damn!” to convey a range of nuanced subtleties ranging between disgust and admiration.

Like Dazed and Confused, maybe repeated viewings leads one to becoming endeared to the neighbourhood characters, but really, this is just a bad movie.

tm sez: 4/10