Everyone around Charles Bronson fails to realize once again that he's got a "death wish" in DEATH WISH 3, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

Having turned professional vigilante in the aftermath of the DEATH WISH II, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returns to the Big Apple but arrives too late in response to an urgent letter from friend Charley (Francis Drake, HAUNTED HONEYMOON) whose beaten body he discovers moments before the police arrive and arrest him. Kersey gives up nothing under brutal police interrogation but he is recognized by police Chief Shriker (Ed Lauter, BREAKHEART PASS) who was on the vigilante squad a decade ago. He throws Kersey into the cooling tank without any charges where he is nearly killed by psychopath Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy, WILLOW) who vows to kill him the next time he sees him. With the crime rate in the Belmont and Sutter neighborhood where Charley lived rising and the police getting flak from the press, Shriker decides to let Kersey loose on the area provided that he answers to him and throws some busts his way. Taking residence in Charley's old apartment, he befriends Charley's WWII buddy Bennett (Martin Balsam, PSYCHO) who reveals that Charley and the other elderly residents in the building are having their Social Security checks and having their belongings burgled by Fraker's gang who are also shaking down the local businesses for protection money. After baiting the gang and gunning down some of them – taking down The Giggler (Kirk Taylor, FULL METAL JACKET) with a special handgun that takes ammunition meant for big game-hunting – he becomes the neighborhood hero but also brings the gang's wrath down on the neighborhood and turns a riot into an all-out war.

Winner' second sequel to DEATH WISH has its share of female brutalization but is ultimately a more gentrified entry, with its plot reminiscent of an old episode of ADAM-12 about elderly business owners getting shaken down by street thugs with the likes of Balsam's grizzled army vet, elderly Jewish and Russian couples, a sassy black woman (Birdie M. Hale, COMING TO AMERICA) who boxes the ears of a mugger, and a Latino couple (STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's Marina Sirtis and Joe Gonzalez who would later work behind the scenes on shows like LAW & ORDER and BOSCH) as potential victims. While the substitution of London for a New York suburb is fairly convincing thanks to the production design of the PINK PANTHER series' Peter Mullins, it is not the heavy post-dubbing of secondary characters that is to blame for the lack of menace in the gang from O'Herlihy's sadist or his punk girlfriend (HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II's Barbie Wilde) to a number of black and Latino actors who were bound to be day players on various crime show throughout the eighties (with BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE's Alex Winter being the least convincing Cuban as "Hermosa"). The violence directed at the innocent victims feels dulled compared to the previous entry, but the explosive climax generates some suspense and excitement even though Kersey's picking off hundreds of gang members with a WWII machine gun and missile launcher feels more like a video game. Although Bronson and the character Kersey would become pretty much synonymous in the eighties, his eighties ventures with director J. Lee Thompson for Cannon like 10 TO MIDNIGHT, MESSENGER OF DEATH, and KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS – along with THE EVIL THAT MEN DO for ITC – were not only more entertaining but could be equally grisly than his works with Winner (whose non-Bronson works for Cannon were rather toothless).

While DEATH WISH II lost three minutes of rape and violence to the MPAA – with uncut versions showing up overseas – DEATH WISH 3 scraped by with an R-rating. MGM's original domestic DVD was fullscreen even though foreign territories where MGM owned it got anamorphic widescreen releases, a situation rectified when MGM licensed the film to TGG Direct who put it out in various Bronson double, triple, and quadruple feature DVD editions aimed at brick and mortar sales. MGM's barebones Blu-ray was supplanted for diehard fans with an all-region Blu-ray from Australian distributor Umbrella Films in a double bill with DEATH WISH II packed with extras (including a bonus DVD featuring three cuts of the second film and notes about the versions). Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a new 2K scan of the original interpositive and it looks a shade darker with more vibrant hues (even Bronson has a little bit more color in his cheeks) with more texture evident in hair, clothing, and facial features as well as more detail in the location work (both New York and London) when the camerawork and editing of the climax allows appraisal of the action backdrops. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean as ever, with clear dialogue and Jimmy Page's funky score coming across with some funk during the opening titles. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included.

Paul Talbot, author of "Bronson's Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films", contributed heavily to Umbrella's DEATH WISH II/3 and 4/5 Blu-ray sets but here provides a brand new audio commentary track in which he notes callbacks to the first film, Winner's practice of creating interesting background action to liven up foreground shots like the early scene at the bus depot of Bronson on the telephone trying to get through to his friend, changes from the screenplay to the film – including Fraker originally being a Latino and the addition of Tony Spiridakis' Angel character – as well as revealing that the New York borough set built in London was on the grounds of the Victorian St. Thomas hospital in Lambeth while all of the apartment interiors, the police station interior, and even the holding cells were all built inside of the still-standing main hospital building. He also provides background on the supporting cast, particularly the Bronson lineage of actors like Lauter and both O'Herlihy and his actor father.