Aging vigilante Paul Kersey returns to New York, strikes a deal with a corrupt-adjacent police chief, and wages open war against a feral street gang terrorizing a crumbling neighborhood.
Where to Watch Death Wish 3
- Patrick WaiMay 24, 2026The only honest reason to watch Death Wish 3 is to watch Charles Bronson turn aging male grievance into urban artillery. And to be fair, the movie understands that perfectly. Bronson was 63 when it came out, yet the film still treats him like an unstoppable grandfather of vengeance who can kill punks, attract women, and glare a city block into submission. The acting is bad, the psychology is nonexistent, and the cops are written like they were assembled from stale donut crumbs and administrative incompetence, but none of that is really the point. You do not come to a Bronson movie for Shakespeare. You come to watch him exterminate street thugs with the calm professionalism of a man taking out the trash. The movie is also shamelessly sleazy: brutal sexual violence, random toplessness, cartoonishly violent gang mayhem, and a level of urban panic that feels less like New York and more like a revenge-fantasy comic strip with garbage fires. Roger Ebert called it only marginally better than Death Wish II, which sounds harsh until you realize he still thought it was basically junk with improved explosions. That said, junk can be fun, and this movie absolutely is. The twist of the police captain quietly backing Bronson’s war on punks gives the whole thing a hilariously crooked logic, like the system itself has decided paperwork is overrated. As for whether New York was really that violent, it was extremely violent in the mid-1980s, but not in this comic-book way. An NYPD report notes homicide rose from 1,392 in 1985 to 2,262 in 1990, so the city’s violence problem was real even if this movie turns it into a feral-video-game apocalypse.
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Death Wish 3 was released on November 1, 1985.
Death Wish 3 was directed by Michael Winner.
Death Wish 3 has a runtime of 90m.
Death Wish 3 was produced by Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus.
Aging vigilante Paul Kersey returns to New York, strikes a deal with a corrupt-adjacent police chief, and wages open war against a feral street gang terrorizing a crumbling neighborhood.
The key characters in Death Wish 3 are Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin), Insp. Richard S. Shriker (Ed Lauter).
Death Wish 3 is rated R.
Death Wish 3 is an Action, Crime, Thriller film.
Death Wish 3 has an audience rating of 5.3 out of 10.
Death Wish 3 had a budget of $9M.
Death Wish 3 has made $16.1M at the box office.