#3: HARD TARGET (1993)

Don't hunt what you can't kill.

In historic Crescent City, men of little means and no hope are being hunted for sport, arranged by sociopath Emil Fouchon and his second-in-command Pik van Cleef. For the right price, the willing participant will be given a belt-strap filled with ten thousand dollars and ordered to follow only one guideline: run. Should the prey make it to the designated endpoint, he shall not only win the game, but also the cash in his belt—a ticket to a second chance. And all he has to risk is...his life. It's during one of these hunts where a homeless war veteran is felled by a hunter's arrow, and once it's become obvious that he's gone missing, his daughter, Natasha, comes to New Orleans to figure out what's become of him. It's there that she meets a poorly-dressed, mulleted, and nearly indecipherable local named Chance Boudreaux, whom she hires to guide her in traversing the criminal underbelly to find out once and for all what's happened to her father. They soon cross paths with a New Orleans police detective who seems hesitant to get involved, but does so only after learning that the institutions on which the police department depend may not just be corrupt, but in league with the very shadowy group of men she is investigating. It's not long after that the mystery of "the game" slowly starts to unravel, men are kicked across the world, and Chance Boudreaux slaps the head of his snake until it goes limp. Some men are sitting ducks; others are a HARD TARGET.

Hard Target was written by Chuck Pfarrer, also responsible for the loony Navy Seals, the awesome Darkman, and many other films that cause him cold shudders whenever someone whispers their titles even thousands of miles away (virusredplanetbarbwire uggggghhhhhhh), but the big reason behind Hard Target's "success" is a name infamous for high-testosterone, operatic, and completely unhinged action. A man who broke out in a big way on the international independent scene before coming to these American shores to make his domestic debut. So what director has bestowed upon us the most exaggerated western in history? Who has the fascination with doves, eye close-ups, unnecessary flips, trench coats, and post-production slow-motion?

Not who, but Woo. John Woo—the only director esteemed enough to appear twice in this top ten list of action absurdity is the crazyman also responsible for the number nine pick, Face/Off.

Hard Target was John Woo's first American film, and how that came to be has a couple different versions. Rumors abound it was Van Damme's urging that John Woo leave his native China to come and work on his first big American film (and this rumor is further perpetuated by Van Damme's own semi-autobiographical film JCVD). Other versions have it that it was Universal Pictures themselves who were courting the director, and that while Woo was receptive, he was actually pursuing Kurt Russell for the role of Chance Boudreaux (which not only would have been its own form of awesome—he already had the mullet and everything—but would seemingly put Van Damme's involvement in Woo's China-to-Hollywood migration in question). Added to that, Hard Target isn't groundbreaking just because it was the first American film of John Woo's career, but it was actually the first time an Asian filmmaker had directed what was considered a tentpole film for a major American studio. Because of this, during production, Universal execs were very nervous, being that one of their own had entrusted a multi-million dollar production to a director who spoke very little English, so it was requested that Hollywood superstar Sam Raimi, an executive producer on the picture, be on set in the event that he had to "take over" production—something that thankfully never happened.

A direct riff on the nearly 100-year-old short story "The Most Dangerous Game," which by 1993 had seen many interpretations, Hard Target appropriated the famous tale once again, this time as less of a satirical thriller and more as a western—right down to Boudreaux's "boots," his skill with a handgun (upside down though it may be), and his first on-screen appearance that has him sitting at a bar and the camera going in close on his eyes, which is not just a Woo trademark, but a western one. Take that, add the twangy guitar/finger-snaps score by Graeme Revell, the New Orleans storefronts indicative of an old west town, and that genre-defining battle of a few good versus many evil, and the western motif has never felt more at home. That the film is set in New Orleans solely to suit Van Damme's thick accent thankfully not only avoids handicapping Hard Target's western influences, but rather complements it quite well, in that it highlights the incompetence and corruption of the New Orleans police department (it wasn't often, in the western genre, that law enforcement were directly responsible for expunging the evil from their on-the-nose named town) while also heightening the economic disproportion that still exists in the Crescent City today.

Hard Target is immensely silly from beginning to end. A "guy" movie through and through, so much that the character of Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler) is painted to be utterly useless without the presence of a man to help her. She's not on screen for ten minutes before she's crying and getting slapped around by a group of thugs looking to rob and perhaps rape, opening the door for Van Damme to enter, destroy those men's limbs, and hand Natasha back her purse and admonish her for counting out her cash in public. In a "real" film, especially in the modern era where blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road are invading theaters with the inexplicably controversial notion that women can be pretty bad-ass, this kind of gross undervaluing of the female lead would be tantamount to misogyny, but in Hard Target, it's all for the best, as, no shit, it's Van Damme's name on the poster. That is why audiences have bought the tickets (this argument comes up again later), so that's what the filmmakers were going to provide. (It doesn't help that Butler appears to be on a heavy dose of lithium during her entire doe-eyed performance, anyway.)

Despite it being heavily inspired by the famous concept of one man hunting another for sport, the plot of Hard Target is the most inconsequential thing about it. Upon its initial theatrical release, even the most discerning critics and harshest reviews had no choice but to acknowledge the sheer spectacle of the film and the magnitude of the stunts, dismissive of the overall plot though they may have been. And in all honesty, had Van Damme, Henriksen, and these same gun battles and motorcycle stunts and explosions been surgically removed and implanted into an entirely different plot, it wouldn't have mattered. Nothing is really gained from the "man is the most dangerous game" concept beyond motivations for both our hero and our villain to eventually come head-to-head while taking a hundred lives in the process. That a group of rich men are selling organized murders of the poor eventually becomes nothing more than window dressing: Van Damme letting loose kicks and punches and gunshots and explosions would have sold any film in 1993. This time, it just so happened to be selling Hard Target.

THE GOOD GUY

Chance Boudreaux. Able seaman. Captain beater. Food critic. Deadbeat union member. Amateur detective-for-hire. Lifetime pedestrian. Bayou born-and-bred. Nephew to the oatmeal guy. Unlicensed punching bag. Doctor hater. Substitute masseuse. Snake wrangler.

Hard Target not only returns John Woo to the fold, but also our beloved Muscles from Brussels, who appeared here previously in the number six pick Universal Soldier. Following that 1992 display of macho bravado, Van Damme appeared in Nowhere to Run, offering an atypically understated performance, and provided a cameo as himself in the underrated Last Action Hero before donning the mullet, the trench coat, and the Timberlands of Chance Boudreaux. His take on the lone gunslinger with the mysterious past is as muted as one might expect—and cowboys certainly don't speak with a Belgian accent—but the posturing and bigger-than-life persona is certainly ever in place. Many of these western-hero characters were deeply flawed individuals shooting men through saloon windows not only because they were pretty pissed off and tired of everyone's shit, but because of that "r" word: redemption. Whether drunks, or aging, or guilty of some anonymous past indiscretion, they quite reluctantly embraced the honorary title of "hero." In Hard Target, Chance doesn't embrace that title due to any particular urge to redeem himself and make up for any especially haunting past sin—not only because the film begins and he's already clearly the hero, but because, frankly, the script for Hard Target ain't tryin' that hard. This is evident at the end when Fouchon demands to know why Boudreaux began meddling in his affairs and Boudreaux responds it's because he was bored.

Chance Boudreaux apparently knows everyone in New Orleans, from ornery diner waitresses, to homeless men, to seedy pornography advertisers, to madams at brothels. To the more discerning viewer, it would seem that such infamy would violate the preordained rules of the mysterious gunslinger, especially with the conflict taking place on the streets of his very own home, rather than the streets of a town into which he had just ridden. But where Van Damme may lack as a gunslinger in external construction he makes up for thematically. He's got the mysterious past down, he's kind of a lowlife, and he inserts himself into the inner workings of law enforcement once he realizes that they're kind of infantile without him. Plus he rides a horse during the finale while shooting a bunch of dudes, you idiots.

Up to this point, Van Damme had opened several films that were designed around his impressive fighting style, which pertained to their own sub-genre of the action world, and which were all nearly identical in their plots: man who fights well is drawn hesitantly into a fighting scenario out of sense of revenge or necessity and eventually wins the day. These films—Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Lionheart—are entertaining for what they are, but sometimes audiences want more—more violence, that is. More grue, more death, more destruction. Universal Soldier would be the first film with Van Damme as the star where the fighting styles are dialed down and guns are finally placed into his hands. After the one-two punch of Universal Soldier and then Hard Target, audiences were delighted to be seeing what they were seeing: Van Damme not just high-kicking dudes across Planet Earth, but seeing him whip out a gun and finishing his victims' descent into space.

In the mid-'90s, Van Damme was at the absolute height of his superstardom. In fact, Hard Target would prove to be the beginning of the end of his box office domination. Following on Hard Target's heels would be the first of three collaborations with filmmaker Peter Hyams, beginning with Timecop, the last film with Van Damme as the lead to make significant bank. While his immediate films to come would assure a modicum of silliness (Sudden Death is among the most entertaining of the Die Hard rip-offs), Hard Target would see Van Damme not just appearing in his most ridiculous film, and not at his most ridiculous looking, but would prove to be "the" film—the one in which the action hero idolized by genre fans would achieve the "one-man army" title and lay a record number of bad guys to waste, all while making the goofiest of faces every single solitary time he fired a gun.

THE BAD GUY

Emil Fouchon. Literal man hunter. Hyperbolic drug dealer. Cash slammer. Thompson Center Arms Contender wielder. Existentialist. The most infuriated pianist in existence.

Lance Henriksen is god of the b-movies and the greatest actor that will ever appear within these hallowed Murdered Men halls. The nicest man you have ever met is capable of playing the most sadistic, sociopathic villain this side of World War II. Long and better-known as having portrayed Bishop in Aliens, Ed Harley in several chapters of Pumpkinhead, Frank Black on cult television show Millennium, and "the Father" in personal favorite No Escape, Lance Henriksen can appear in the biggest piece of shit you've ever seen and make you glad you're watching it—that's the power behind his talent. He has been turning in extremely solid but mostly supporting character work ever since his first feature film appearance in Dog Day Afternoon back in the dark ages of 1975. Though his filmography lists a litany of titles that sound as unappealing as they likely are (his self-admitted "alimony movies"), there's one thing that can be guaranteed: no matter how many people in those films melt, or explode, or meet the teeth of aliens/mutant Bigfeet, Henriksen is going to be putting 100% into his performance as whatever good guy/bad guy/voice-over-only character that he's playing. He's as dedicated to his craft as they come, hailing from the old school of method-acting. Motherfucker was so in-tune that he for-realsies allowed himself to be set on fire in the third-act scene of Hard Target, during which the flames flared a bit more than anyone anticipated, forcing him to rip off his fiery coat and hurl it at the nearest wall..all while staying in character to complete the scene. That cool thing you did once and keep telling people about?

It will never be that cool.

What makes all the films featured in Top Ten Murdered Men so worthy of celebration is admittedly that delectable permeation of irony—that undercurrent of unintended humor that heightens the level of audience enjoyment. To be specific, would Hard Target have benefited from utilizing another performer as the lead (like Kurt Russell) who could not only display the kind of skillful choreography of which Van Damme was capable, but all while offering a solid performance free of the kind of foreign-tongued baggage that's come to define so many of our action stars? Sure, more than one person would argue that a stronger performance makes for a stronger film. But what kind of film needs to be strengthened? Which aspect would be ultimately reinforced? Would it benefit anyone at all if one could go back in time and start plugging stronger aspects into Hard Target, in effect creating a "better" film? Fuck no. Hard Target is a product of both purposeful and accidental sensibilities, a beautiful amalgamation of success and failure—and this more than includes the somewhat stunted performance by our leading split-doer. The legendary status that Hard Target has achieved has everything to do with the "shortcomings" of its own production.

While Henriksen is fully aware of the over-the-top nature of the story and that it's not to be taken seriously, he knows that the best way to contribute is to dial up his performance of Emil Fouchon way past eleven. If Boudreaux's arch nemesis plays the piano, then he's going to play the ever loving fucking shit out of that piano, slamming every key with a near-maniacal look of unbridled fury splayed across his face. If he's going to dismissively throw money at an obese underling, he's going to slam that money across his fat back so hard he may as well be trying to slam it through him. If someone has the audacity to die slowly in front of him of a snake bite, thereby sincerely inconveniencing him, he's going to step on the corpse-to-be's chest and growl, "I'll fuck you, and then I'll eat you" before suggesting that his men "die quieter." And if, near the end, Fouchon realizes that he's losing control over "the game," he's not just going to react in anger—he's going to spin disjointedly, surrounded by flames, bellowing at the wall, screaming indecipherably, grunting like an uncaged animal following years of vicious abuse. Saliva will spatter from his mouth as he screams primal threats into the air surrounding them all, pure ferocity emanating from his every fiber. "There isn't a country in the world I haven't fired a bullet in!" he screams. "You can't kill me! I'm on every battlefield!" Castor Troy was a cartoon villain, as was Andrew Scott and Manny Fraker before him. But Emil Fouchon feels dangerous, and the mythos of his character is deeply unsettling. As he makes it known in the film, Fouchon and co. have traveled throughout not just Louisiana, and not just the United States, but the entire world, setting up games of ritualized murder for the super rich. He's become super rich by selling not just men, but the opportunity to kill those men, to the wealthiest of sociopaths—people so bored with their vast fortunes that it takes controlled-setting murder to feel alive again. And in one particular scene when his client shows hesitation about satisfying their contract—shows immense unease at the mere idea of taking another man's life—Fouchon becomes incensed, ordering him to finish the job before walking away and muttering, "God, why didn't he just go fishing?" This is all because Fouchon feels nothing, no empathy whatsoever toward his fellow man. He's not just disappointed that his client won't take advantage of his delivered prey, but it actually enrages him, as if "the game" were just another everyday activity. His entire being is predicated on selling lives, and the notion that other people aren't as enthusiastic about such a thing doesn't just confound him, but infuriates him.

There's nothing ironically good about Henriksen's performance. Every seemingly silly thing is not a happy accident, nor is it going for one thing but inadvertently achieving something different. Henriksen's performance is by careful, distinctive design. For once, the actor playing the villain is fully in on the joke and embraces it to maximum effect.

In a move similar to that of Steven Seagal's during the post-production on Out for Justice, it was at Van Damme's orders that Henriksen's scenes be reduced in the final cut, as he was likely concerned about being upstaged in the very film where he played the lead role. This longer cut—known as the "John Woo workprint version"—has become long sought-after in the bootleg market and sadly has never materialized anywhere in any legitimate form.

From Wiki:

Van Damme went with his own editor to make his own edit of the film. Van Damme's version excises whole characters to insert more scenes and close-ups of his character Chance. When asked about this edit, Van Damme replied that, "People pay their money to see me, not to see Lance Henriksen."

While Van Damme's presence will always guarantee a certain attraction, Hard Target could have only benefited from further pure and unfiltered Lance Henriksen. Simply put, there's praise, there's hyperbole, and then there's truth: no one in the world could have played the role of Emil Fouchon with the same gravitas, the same bombastic approach, and lastly, the same sincerity.

Pik van Cleef. Number two of Emil Fouchon. Literal ear-lowerer. Scissors stabber. Heffer hater. Feelings considerer. Potential Irishman.

Arnold Vosloo was Mummy.

THE CASUALTIES

The Bad Guys

One motorcyclist shoots a gas can thrown at him (?) and turns into a full-on conflagration. One getaway driver and one motorcyclist receive bullets into their person. One motorcyclist gets his neck broken by an almighty boot. One motorcyclist takes several bullets before getting slammed head-on by another motorcycle. One henchman gets blown up by some exploding moonshine. One henchman gets pulverized by a shotgun...while in a helicopter...which was fired from a horse. One motorcyclist catches a gas can tossed his way before it's shotgunned, blowing him into beautiful smithereens and his motorcycle through a window. Two henchmen are literally shotgunned INTO fire. One henchman gets choked out with the butt of a shotgun before receiving a tremendous spin-kick to the face and is later shot nine times with a handgun. Another motorcyclist receives more of the same. One henchman gets an arrow through the neck. One leather-clad misogynist gets shot pointblank in the chest. One cowboy-clad henchman gets a dose of hot lead. Two more henchmen get double-handgunned. Three henchmen get riddled with bullets, the last of them falling down the stairs. Thee more henchmen, one of whom drops a grenade, get red holes blown in them. One henchman gets whipped in the face with a grenade wrapped in a shirt and killed by the shotgun stolen from his startled hands. van Cleef gets shot so many times even the NRA cringed from the excess and closed their Twitter account.

The Good Guys

One homeless man (a cameo from the film's screenwriter) and father to our damsel in distress is shot with painful looking arrows before drowning in a river. One corrupt doctor (the sheriff from Friday the 13th: Part 5—A New Beginning who says "it's Jason Voorhees!" and gets an ashtray thrown at him) gets shot in the eye through his door's peephole. One Vietnam veteran is hunted through the graveyard, but actually manages to take out the hunter who paid to kill him, before being executed in the street with an automatic weapon (during which a few innocent bystanders may or may not meet their ends.) One very obese games arranger gets the top of his head blown off at pointblank range via shotgun. Detective Mitchell (Candyman's Kasi Lemmons) gets sheared by a shotgun blast before taking several more MP4 shots to the chest.

THE BEST KILL

No contest. Boudreaux standing entirely up on a motorcycle leaking gasoline and heading straight for a Bronco full of bad guys, and then LEAPING over the entire vehicle in time to shoot them from behind and blow them the fuck up, not only takes the cake for best kill, but frankly, should be in every movie in existence.

Runner up goes to Boudreaux shooting Sven-Ole Thorsen far more times than the clip of his upside handgun allows—29 shots, to be exact—before delivering a completely unnecessary roundhouse kick to the face of the man whom, at that point, is quite obviously very dead.

THE DAMAGE

Boudreaux gets manhandled during the first act while doing some investigatory work. He's later punched in the face, cut on the arm, and beaten with a fiery 2x4. He also ends up in front of several explosions, none of which seem to faze him in any way beyond propelling him nearer to the next man he needs to shoot.

And in case you're wondering, Uncle Douvet (Wilford Brimley) gets stabbed with an arrow, but no one really gives a shit about this character, do they?

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

Boudreaux fires a pretty gnarly shotgun into Fouchon's shoulder, sending him flipping backwards across the room before rushing at him, delivering the most bad-ass jump kick of the film, followed by an array of kicks to the chest, punches to the face, and one grenade dropped down his pants. To his credit, Henriksen manages to upstage his own death sentence by at first laughing at what he assumes to be a dud of a grenade before seeing its spark ignite to blow him to confetti, punctuating his life with "oop!"

THE LINE

"Hunting season is over."

THE VERDICT

A parody of Hard Target would look exactly like Hard Target, and that's why it rules as hard as it does. What may not have been ludicrous in 1993 is very ludicrous now, and it only adds to the enjoyment. Van Damme delivers his most satisfying film in the sub-genre of absurd action, Henriksen provides an award-winning performance as the ultimate unhinged villain, and John Woo somehow manages to create spectacle that's even more absurd than that other film he made about the two men who switch faces, live, and spend two hours trying to kill each other with broken glass. Hard Target's original incarnation may have been sullied by the ego of one particular mullet-sporting high-kicker, but there's no denying that the finished product was a full-on bull's-eye.

#4: TANGO & CASH (1989)

Two of L.A.'s top rival cops are going to have to work together...even if it kills them!

Lieutenants Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash are the two toppest cops in Los Angeles, which means they are polar opposites who despise each other. Tango is a clean-cut, suave, suit-wearing, stockmarket-playing Playboy type while Cash is a slob who grabs passing pizza without prejudice and wears $9 shirts (which means he's the fun one). Despising both of them equally is Yves Perret, crime lord and drug dealer, who loses millions of dollars from each illegal operation that Tango or Cash bust. Claiming that killing them would be to simply create ten more cops like them, Perret instead deduces that the best way to defeat Tango and Cash is, first, with dishonorm—by framing them for murder and police corruption—and then disposing of them forever—by sending them away to a prison that's populated by the felons and degenerates the cops have spent their entire careers putting away. With Perret and his minions able to infiltrate the corrupt prison at their convenience to whisk the cops away from their cells for nightly torture sessions, Tango and Cash know their next bed check might be their last, so they make plans to escape. After a daring prison break, the two at-odds cops have little choice but to team up, work together, and follow the trail of slimeballs to the head crime kingpin. Along the way, their differing personalities and philosophies will earn big belly laughs as they unleash upon each other unyielding waves of wisecracks, insults, penis-related defamation, and homoerotic bantering, but also while taking the lives of dozens of men, obtaining justice from those who soiled their names, and committing the most epic of high-fives.

Tango & Cash, man-go and smash! Downtown Clown vs. Beverly Hills Wop! This piece of genius was the best farewell to '80s action that anyone without the surname "God" could have created. Directed in 1989 by Andrey Konchalovskiy (Runaway Train), who was fired toward the end of shooting and replaced by Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain), who saw more eye-to-eye with the studio that wanted the film to be lighter, and starring two of the greatest names in actiondom, Tango & Cash was destined to be a balls-to-the-wall, pun-douched, gun-toting, Clint Howard-having good time. Tango & Cash marched into the room, looked all the other buddy cop movies in the face, pushed up their sleeves, and left them all FUBAR, big time. Written by Randy Feldman (Van Damme's Nowhere to Run), Tango & Cash is, once again, one of those rare instances in which all kinds of behind-the-scenes drama could very well have handicapped the film right out of the gate, but even after the original Cash dropped out to star in Road  House, and the script was rewritten numerous times during production, and the producer fired the original director, and four—count'em, four—different men directed portions of the film, and Stallone fired original director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld, nothing could stop this rollicking piece of ridiculousness. The gods of fate and the hands of time worked together massaging the balance to ensure the path for Tango & Cash remained unfettered, unobstructed, and oh yeah, unprecedented. Tango and Cash, Cash and Tango. Let's do it! (Drumbeat.)

When one asks the question, "Remember when action films were allowed to be fun?", this is the title that should pop into your brain. Because that's Tango & Cash: fun. It's fun in cinematic form. And it's not just fun, but it emits fun; it breeds fun. Like the Terminator itself, that's what it does. That's ALL IT DOES. Tango & Cash wants only to entertain. There's no social commentary going on, no lessons to learn, no hyperbolic dangers that could one day manifest in the real world. But that's cool, because not every action romp needs such weighty ideas. Demolition Man attempted to masquerade every so often as satire, but it, too, preferred to focus on John Spartan and Simon Phoenix trying to murder-death-kill each other. Death Wish 3 had even less to say beyond "stand up for yourself!" (kind of), but was actually just an excuse for Paul Kersey to forcefully remove teeth from the mouths of punks with wooden boards. Tango & Cash not only has nothing of merit to say, it doesn't even know how to speak—unless, of course, it's when our leads are either mercilessly mocking each other in every possible sense—appearance, masculinity (or lack thereof), member proportions, rationale, intelligence—or if one of them is fucking the other's sister.

But it's all okay, people. Tango & Cash is perfect as it is—warts, gratuitous breasts, and all. It's a loud, brash, politically incorrect, violent work of art that can be summed up in three simple words: dick-measuring contest.

Let's enhance that.

The scene in which our heroes share a prison shower scene and make snide remarks about the other's dick size, on its surface, may just seem like something two arrogant, constantly competing guys would probably do. But in reality, all of Tango & Cash is one big dick-measuring contest. If Tango's going to psyche out a couple of drug dealers speeding at him in a fast-moving tanker truck by firing shots into their windshield while standing directly in the path of the truck, then Cash is going to giggle uproariously at the headlines in the newspaper about his latest drug bust before taking several shots to his bullet-proof vested chest and pursuing the would-be assassin till he gets his man.

And later, in court and upon their arraignment for the bogus charges against them, Tango stands up and says:

Your Honor, I have been a policeman for twelve years, and I think it's the best organization in the country. At times, I've been accused of being too aggressive at taking criminals off the streets. Well, if that's a sin, then I guess I'm guilty. All the cops I've worked with are good cops. You are...doing a tough job. And I only hope that the outcome of this trial is such, that the whole department is not judged by what has transpired here. Thank you.

To which Cash adds, while addressing the court:

This whole thing FUCKING SUCKS!

The fact that these characters are constantly trying to upstage each other, either directly or omnisciently, pretty much sums up the dynamic they'll maintain throughout, regardless of the notion that their relationship systematically progresses from enemies to frenemies. Even as they walk down Rape Alley in their new prison home, they can hardly curb their impulse to out-joke each other. And as cell after cell of prisoners bellow horribly the rape Tango and Cash will endure ("I'm gonna put brown sugar in your ass!" screams a black inmate), Cash eyes all the burning debris and remarks that he's forgotten to bring the marshmallows. Framed for murder? Threats of rape? None of it matters—just know that X is funnier.

The buddy cop movie has been a big go-to in the genre for going on decades now, and it remains a popular gimmick even today. Filmmaker Walter Hill has rocked this concept no less than four times, with increasingly diminishing results. Taking it back to an overall sense, there's Riggs and Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon, Cates and Hammond of 48 Hours, McClane and Carver of Die Hard with a Vengeance, Lockhart and "Gay" Perry of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and to get really abstract, Vincent and Max in Collateral—all are not just examples of the buddy cop formula, but also arguably among the best action/thriller offerings in general. This idea of pairing up at-odds characters and forcing them into situations where they have no choice but to depend on the other is a concept consistently ripe for exploration. While this formula doesn't always work (let's throw out Showdown in Little Tokyo and Red Heat as examples), every so often two actors are paired together resulting in not just believable and infectious chemistry, but an unforgiving good time. Tango & Cash makes for the best. Anyone who says differently will have their tongue ripped out. With a tow truck.

Tango & Cash sports some of the best character actors working today (though some are no longer with us). Among the standouts are big-faced thespian Robert Z'Dar as...um, "Face." He likely looks familiar to fans of the Maniac Cop trilogy, as he played the titular role in those shockingly successful horror films scattered throughout the '80s and '90s. "Face" has the honor of presenting the first on-screen villain for Ray Tango, and in typical high-watermark-level action films, he's left emasculated and humiliated after crossing his path—not once, not twice, but thrice! After he eventually returns as a sort of secondary henchman, doing battle with Stallone on a rain-drenched rooftop, he offers a much more intimidating villain than the many others against which Stallone would fight later on in his career (like Eric Roberts).

Leveling out the good guys is Geoffrey Lewis, who plays Captain Schroeder and delivers one of the best/worst puns in the entire film. ("Is this how you screen all your guests?") Lewis happily plays the characteristic superior who seems as proud as he is annoyed with his progeny of sorts. In addition to his awesome/terrible dialogue mentioned above, Lewis, in one silent second of screen time, perfectly encapsulates the film-established dynamic between superior and subject that often played out in the genre during this era: that of the tough but lovable captain overseeing the unorthodox but admittedly effective methods of his Dennis-the-Menace-like underling. In the film's opener in which Tango haphazardly fires a bullet into a gasoline tanker to prove that it's not filled with gasoline, but cocaine, Captain Schroeder spreads his suit jacket to place his hands on his hips, cocks his head, and looks adoringly/tskingly at Tango, his facial expression alone nearly screaming, "Could I love this knucklehead more?" It's perfect.

This list of "hey, him!" easily continues with Michael J. Pollard (Scrooged), Brion James (Blade Runner), Eddie Bunker (Mr. Blue from Reservoir Dogs as well as real-life career criminal), James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China), Michael Jeter (The Green Mile), and the imitable Clint Howard (everything, plus Seinfeld).

THE GOOD GUYS

Ray Tango. Alias Captain Fantastic. Taurus. Westside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Peewee. Part-time stockbroker. Rambo belittler. Snow maker. Cocaine licker. Guest screener. Sister enabler. Cock blocker. Candidate for the Psycho Hall of Fame.

Rolling out the red carpet for this action icon, Stallone returns to Top Ten Murdered Men after his #8 appearance in Demolition Man.

Stallone starred in thirteen films during the 1980s, and if we scrape away all the franchise stuff and just focus on his one-offs, that cuts the number down to seven. If we cut that number down to the ones worth a damn, we get three. And if we need one bonafide-fucking-classic, we get Tango & Cash. Stallone would later go on record as saying that all of his Rocky and Rambo sequels (minus Rocky Balboa and 2008's Rambo) were nothing more than vanity projects—an excuse for him to exploit popular characters, rule the box office, and show off his impressive physique. Between that, and the fact that his non-franchise picks of the '80s had him playing downtrodden characters in shitty or slimy situations, Tango & Cash was the only flick in that ten-year stretch that let him have any fun. And that might be why his turn as Ray Tango results in such jocularity despite Stallone's usual misgivings about playing such a goofball. An evaluation of Stallone's action career results in a bevy of films in which humor or irony wasn't an aspect on which he relied, and that kind of attraction toward the dark continues for him even today. The Expendables aside (which do get lighter as they progress), Stallone has always been drawn to dark and moody characters. His John Rambo does a complete 360 over the course of the First Blood series, going from haunted, to haunted/pissed, to patriotic/cartoonish, and back to haunted again. Assassins, or Bullet to the Head, or his remake of Get Carter present characters with a depressing past who wouldn't know a humor joke if it cupped the balls and stroked the shaft—and that's what Stallone likes (heh heh heh). Even in Grudge Match, a send-up of his cinematic history as boxer Rocky Balboa and among the broadest comedies he's ever done, he mostly opted to remain stoic and still while his co-star, Robert De Niro, chewed every piece of scenery and mugged for every camera. There's something about the comedy genre that Stallone doesn't quite "get," and this is likely why, looking back, his contributions to the comedy world are very few, very far between, and most of them lousy. (Simply said: Oscar.)

Having said that, Stallone's take on Ray Tango isn't so much a mixed bag as it is an occasionally uneven approach to a character. While that could be due to Stallone's discomfort within the confines of the comedy genre, it more has to do with how his performance ultimately compares to the character of...

Gabriel Cash. Alias Queen for a Day. Leo. Eastside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Mini Mouse. Pizza lover. Pompadour rocker. Cross dresser. Tango impressionist. English-language instructor. Alimony dater. Willing cuckolder.

Kurt Russell. Just say his name. Let it caress your tongue like a fine lager. Not enough? Snake Plissken. Wyatt Earp. R.J. MacCready. The guy from Overboard. Jack Fucking Burton. The guy who should've done Road House, but didn't, because the natural order knew that the cosmos could never survive the repercussions and relentless sonic booms from something that awesome.

Kurt Russell is Hollywood royalty. His CV is not just solid, but filled with characters that have since become iconic, and films that have since been blessed with that feared word: "classic." Though he deserves to go down in action history based on that alone (and he likely will), the one main thing lacking in his career is the fact that, beyond the Escape films he did with John Carpenter, he was always part of an ensemble. He never obtained his one-man army title or franchise that saw him strapping on the camouflage and taking to the ______ to rescue _____. He never had his scene where he slid on the cannon-sized firearm primarily used for decimating tiny armies of people and using it against the mercenaries or the leather-clad bikers or the street punks who'd shat upon him their ultimately self-destructive supreme disrespect. Sure, Snake Plissken went on all kinds of solo missions, but always ended up with a collection of weirdos, misfits, and wormy guys by his side. Russell never achieved that godlike lone-gunman status, and never reveled in the excess of the 1980s. Simply put, he never had his one solo action outing that grew to such ridiculous proportions that years later it would be looked back on with equal helpings ironic and genuine love. That's not at all to talk down on his filmography—the fact alone that he was in The Thing is cooler than anything else legitimate the more typical action icons have ever done (yeah, more than First Blood, more than The Terminator)—but at times it feels like Russell walked away from a meeting or shredded a script that could have delivered unto us that kind of brainless, bloodied bout of orgiastic carnage and destruction to which most of our typical action guys can claim. (He also turned down Stallone's offer to appear in The Expendables, claiming his desire to focus less on ensemble work, but considering he joined an even bigger ensemble in Furious 7, that was likely just polite Russell speak for "this script is really shitty.") However, let's not forget his moment in Tombstone during which he blows away Powers Booth while charging across a river, completely unconcerned with the bullets whizzing by his head, bellowing "NO!" over and over again, because he is just that pissed off. Try for the rest of your life: you will never do anything as manly.

In Tango & Cash, Russell feels right at home. Channeling Jack Burton, one of his most celebrated characters, and with a comparably unending supply of yuck-yucks, his Gabriel Cash is the man you want to invite to every party. He's a poor slob, kind of a loser outside of his cop job, and he's cool with it. Though Tango shares equal screen time with Cash, and though Stallone shares equal billing with Russell, in many ways this feels more like a Cash film than a Tango film. Though Tango sheds his primped and proper Playboy look pretty early on, and there's no kind of attempt to maintain his type-A personality for the remaining iteration of the character, leaving him with the same rough-and-tough cocky exterior as his counterpart, Stallone never feels 100% confident uttering some of the cornier dialogue or some of the more groan-inducing puns. Russell, however, nails it—the dialogue, the mood, the tone, and the timing. While they match each other pound for pound—puns beget puns, punches/kicks/shootings inspire another round of such—neither of our leads ever come across as more/less masculine than the other. But when it comes to personality and charisma, Russell owns this shit in spades.

THE BAD GUY

Yves Perret. Drug dealer. Mouse squeezer. Game fixer. Post-Labor-Day white-wearer. Insistence discourager. Grantland Rice quoter. Disliker of both Tango and Cash.

Jack Palance! Now this is one cool motherfucker right here. Perhaps most famous to modern audiences as playing Carl Grissom in Tim Burton's 1989 take on Batman, Palance, over his long career, played an incarnation of Dracula for television, won an Oscar for City Slickers, delighted horror fans in the inexplicably well-cast horror schlock Alone in the Dark (also starring Martin Landau), and finally, for-realsies punched both Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster square in the face. In Tango & Cash, he presents a refreshingly different take on "the villain" than has been featured in Top Ten Murdered Men so far. While, say, Out for Justice's Richie Madano was a drug-addicted maniacal madman, and Face/Off's Castor Troy was more of a likable cartoon exploding with uncontainable character, Palance's Perret is calm, cool, collected, and calculating. He knows that Tango and Cash are a problem, but unlike his immediate henchmen who assume that killing them off would be best, Perret uses his political and official ties to make his move. He plays it smart, keeping a distance from all the nefaria. He moves like a ghost, drifting unseen down a highway in a stretch limousine, right past one of his busted drug operations; he sneaks into the dripping, rusty prison holding Tango and Cash with as much ease as when he sneaks right back out again. And yet, much like the very white suit he wears, his reputation remains spotless. This might sound like a "boring" appoach to a villain for those who are unfamiliar with the film, but Tango & Cash offers up enough shooting exchanges and body trauma between all of Perret's henchmen so that when it comes time for Tango and Cash to cross paths with Perret in the flesh there's an almost gentlemanly approach by Palance to his villainous character. There's no need to fall back on drawn out gun battles and displays of bravado. At the very least, and though he was doomed to fail because he's the bad guy, his scheme to relegate Tango and Cash to rats in a maze ultimately proves successful—"We're in a maze!" Tango remarks during the final act as they drive their RV-from-hell around Perret's compound—though the end result isn't exactly as Perret had hoped. Besides, Palance was 70 at this point in his career, so it's not like he could do somersaults and throw stuntmen over his head, so shut your mouths. Guy did ONE-ARMED PUSH-UPS AT THE OSCARS. AT 72.

Palance maintained an eclectic career of discerning quality, playing a scenery-chewing Perret two years before he would win that Oscar, and two years after, would be appearing in a direct-to-video sequel to Van Damme's Cyborg. He was an interesting actor, and an even more interesting man, who was able to evaluate his body of work as objectively as one ever could:

"Most of the stuff I do is garbage."

Well then!

THE CASUALTIES

The Good Guys. Abiding by the knees-touching-ground rules, a dozen prisoners fall at the might of Tango and Cash, who utilize a baseball bat and their general surroundings to quell them all. Tango and Cash blast ass across Perret's construction compound in the film's last act, shooting his underlings indiscriminately, and amidst all the flames and explosions, specific individual casualties aren't really captured. It comes across more as general carnage than itemized murder. Cash bellows "that's all of 'em!" at the end of their killathon, and there looked to be about two dozen dudes on site, so, that sounds close enough. Later, Tango and Cash shoot-to-kill six more bad guys, along with Quan (James Hong) and Lopez, Perret's #2s. Cash shoves a grenade into Requin's knickers and punches him down the stairs while Tango high-kicks a random henchman into a glass table—a henchman who had yet to appear on screen, and who likely appeared only so Tango had someone to fight while Cash was taking on another sub-villain that the film had bothered to introduce earlier.

The Bad Guys. Cash's friend Matt gets a slit throat for trying to help our heroes escape the prison and a crooked FBI agent is blown up by a car bomb. Pretty weak, bad guys!

THE BEST KILL

"Face" frying in the power lines of the prison rooftop sure makes for a shocking death!

How about that joke?

THE DAMAGE

Tango and Cash endure a night-time electroshock session down in the prison boiler room. Cash wears pantyhose. Tango dives away from an explosion. Cash takes a shot in the arm.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

After initially being thrown off by the disorientation of the house of mirrors Perret has in his office for some reason, Tango and Cash aim for the knees on the count of three, but somehow end up shooting him in the brain...on two.

"My sights are off!" Tango says with a shrug.

"Mine too!" Cash agrees.

Sure they are, guys. Sure they are. ♥

THE LINE

Every line in this thing is in high contention for "the line." There is more dialogue dedicated to being ironic or amusing than that which is dedicated merely to providing exposition (boring!) and so determining what stands above the rest is a tall order. However, after Cash completely destroys a Russian civilian's car while in the process of taking down a potential assassin, and after the Russian goes off on a foreign-tongued tirade, Cash smiles a big cheesy smile and quips, "Welcome to America!"

Honorable mention goes to: "FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all recognition" and "English 101."

THE VERDICT

Stallone seems to be, once again, pursuing sequels to every one of his franchises and one-off hits like there's no tomorrow. He unretired Rocky for Creed, wrote Creed II, spearheaded Rambo: Last Blood, and Cliffhanger 2 is shooting right now, as there are more cliffs that need hanging. Given its cult status, and the fact that one can't even mention its title while in the company of like-minded aficionados without a unifying proclamation of "I fucking love that movie!" followed by a subsequent and supreme moment of self-satisfaction, it's perplexing that Stallone hasn't mentioned Tango & Cash 2 even as a side comment. Unpopular opinions are those which show appreciation and enthusiasm for his recent moneymaker, The Expendables franchise, but one wonders how many of its supporters would be willing to erase it all from history if it meant seeing Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash come together for one more pun-hurling, prison-breaking, dick-belittling, high-fiving extravaganza of manliness.

#5: DEATH WISH 3 (1985)

He's Judge, Jury, and Executioner!

Paul Kersey is back in New York, the scene of his first violent escapade as "the vigilante," to visit Charley, an old friend and fellow Korean War veteran. Upon arriving, Kersey is disgusted to discover that his friend has been living within the confines of a ghetto overrun by gang members hellbent on terrorizing, victimizing, robbing, raping, and murdering every last remaining tenant. Hordes of punks stand in groups outside harassing passersby; graffiti covers every wall. The few decent inhabitants of the neighborhood try to walk by unmolested. One of these victimized tenants is Charley, who suffers an attack/robbery from several punks and dies in Kersey's arms just as he arrives, and just before a swath of cops burst into the apartment. Kersey is initially blamed for the crime and taken downtown, where he has a confrontation with Manny Fraker, an albino face-painted punk who just happens to be leader of the gang responsible for Charley's death and all the other neighborhood terrorism. While being booked, Kersey also meets Lieutenant Shriker, a long-time member of the police force well aware of Kersey's past as "the vigilante." Shriker offers Kersey a proposal: he will turn a blind eye as Kersey takes revenge against all the punks responsible for Charley's death, so long as he provides information to Shriker's unit about all the gang's goings-on so they can move in, bust them, and take the credit. Kersey agrees, temporarily moves into Charley's apartment, befriends his old neighbors, and soon embraces his old vigilante ways to clean up the neighborhood the only way he knows how: beautiful violence.

Death Wish 3 was written by Don Jakoby (under pseudonym Michael Edmonds), who also wrote the underrated Blue Thunder, the silly but harmless Arachnophobia, and John Carpenter's Vampires, to name a few. More significantly, this sequel was a hat-trick move from director Michael Winner, who had directed the previous two installments in what would become one of the most marquee-famous action franchises in film history. To watch the first Death Wish, a film steeped in the gritty seriousness and social commentary most filmmakers abandoned following the end of the 1970s, and then watch this entry, which is the equivalent of a live-action "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon, one would almost have to think that a brand new workman director had been brought on to continue the series, rather than the director who had proved himself capable of marrying a violent concept to a dramatic one and who would never dream of blatantly shitting all over the legacy he'd helped create. But no, the workman director approach wouldn't begin until Death Wish 5: The Face of Death, the final film in the series, and, not surprisingly, the worst. Winner, an actual filmmaker who had proven himself capable of delivering a serious-minded film, is amazingly the same man responsible for the outlandish series of events that a whole bunch of people managed to luck out and film and eventually name Death Wish 3; it's the silliest ninety minutes you're ever apt to see, for all kinds of reasons.

The unexpected tonal change in the Death Wish series very much mirrors that of the First Blood series, in that their increasingly absurd entries unfortunately/fortunately succeeded in not only becoming so exponentially removed from their first films' original ideals that they barely resembled each other beyond those familiar faces painted on their posters, but also (somehow) simultaneously established a precedent of cartoon violence for which those series would ultimately be known. As far as Death Wish goes, this can be likened to the involvement of the legendary Cannon Films, who produced the picture, and who are responsible for some of the most iconic b-action films of all time.

Interestingly and also a little sadly, Death Wish 3 would mark the final of six collaborations between director Winner and Charles Bronson, allegedly caused by Bronson objecting to the amount of violence that Winner secretly shot when the star wasn't on set. And in a fair and just world, it would be the artfully-minded individual endeavoring to maintain a certain level of respectability within his or her craft that would deserve the accolades, but the jury will be forever out on if Death Wish 3 was ever going to be capable of that certain level of respectability. The first sign of that would have been the script itself, which, to describe using modern terms, is a hyper-violent marriage of Grumpy Old Men and Home Alone, and which includes a third-act extended finale where more time is dedicated to people dying than people not dying. At no point do the inner-workings of Death Wish 3—not in any kind of actual way, nor in any "what-could-have-been?" hyperbolic kind of way—land anywhere within remote throwing distance of respectability. By then, Death Wish 2 had already proven that there was no recapturing the kind of zeitgeist-defining lightning in a bottle that the first Death Wish had obtained. Death Wish 2—in which Kersey's daughter was sexually victimized yet again, only this time dying an unnecessarily violent death, leading Kersey to go after an even higher number of gang members—may have raised the stakes as far as sequels demanded, but it did nothing to heighten, and in fact stunted, the artistic integrity for which the first Death Wish had strived. Having said that, Death Wish 2 is an exercise in restraint when compared to Death Wish 3, which is the '80s action film equivalent of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise. It's just that, this time, the fatalities of Death Wish 3, whether they be of the innocent or guilty variety, were designed for audience exhilaration, not revulsion. And Winner wasn't bothered by all the vitriol tossed his way from critics, as this had been by design. In response to reviewers' condemnation of his fixation on violence and gore, he'd replied, "The public likes action. It takes their minds off the real world for an hour and that’s what entertainment is all about... It’s fantasy; people don’t watch a murder and then go out and commit one." He had also later stated, "I’d have Charles Bronson starring in Death Wish 26 if I thought it would make a profit."

If only.

So far, every film featured in Top Ten Murdered Men has been silly on some level, and some sillier than others (looking and smiling right at you, Face/Off), but Death Wish 3 comes dangerously close to being the silliest. Probably both ironic and unironic love aside, Death Wish 3 is kind of a masterpiece. It is Charles Bronson meets Merry Melodies. It is an unabashed series of vignettes in which people are killed in extremely disparate ways, loosely connected only by one common thread: they deserve it. Kersey knows they deserve it, the audience knows they deserve it, and the audience wants Kersey to make it rain bodies. And by gosh, does he ever. While the previous two Death Wish films, each in their own ways, wanted to make killing ugly, and revenge conflicting, Death Wish 3 wants you to eat your fucking popcorn and enjoy the carnage, you assholes. Out of sight is any sense of conflict. There are no warring minds re: revenge versus justice. Kersey barely needs a reason to begin unpacking his many weapons of mass destruction. Evidently he can't wait to do it. His ease at life-taking has come to define him. He's no longer haunted by the change that's taken place inside him, which turned him from mild-mannered architect/widower to a nonplussed bachelor/accomplished killing machine.

In the first Death Wish, Kersey was an amateur. He knew how to fire a gun, and could sometimes hit a target, but he was in uncharted waters. He was out of his element. It was his fury, heartbreak, and frustration with bureaucracy driving him, not his bloodlust. Same goes for Death Wish 2, which maintained the failure of the justice system, but which also established that, by then, killing for Kersey had become old hat. In Death Wish 3, "blowing a man's fucking brain off" is written on Kersey's daily agenda, next to picking up eggs and shaping his mustache with an X-ACTO knife. At no time does the audience ever feel like Kersey is in real, actual danger—he's become a pint-sized Terminator with puffy cheeks and grandpop emo hair. The audience wants to see him take lives in the same way they wanted to see Fred Astaire dance or Bette Midler sing. (In some respects, the audience even wants to get in on the action: see the official Death Wish 3 video game—one could argue a precursor to Grand Theft Auto— released in 1986 by Gremlin Graphics.) This pro-death stance isn't just relegated to Kersey himself, but to the attitudes of nearly every protagonist involved in the extermination of the city's punk populace. Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter) shows no sense of hesitation whatsoever when he sics Kersey onto his city, encouraging him to take out as many "roaches" as he can—and this is before Shriker joins in on the hunt himself. Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez), one of Kersey's neighbors and whose wife was recently killed by the gang, skips the whole "conflicted" thing that the widower Kersey experiences in the first Death Wish and instead runs around as his assistant holding all the excess ammo being fed into Kersey's dick-extending M60 while occasionally blowing holes in men with a zip gun. Even Bennett (Martin Balsalm), who the film at least acknowledges as a veteran of World War II and therefore a bit more amenable to war, watches out the window as cars explode, dozens of gang members are shot down in the street, and buildings burn—and the look of pleasure, relief, happiness, and ecstasy present on his face is unmistakable. In previous Death Wish films, the vigilante murders had been committed in response to the frustration spurred by feelings of helplessness; in Death Wish 3, they are cathartic release. They are the unleashing pent-up blue balls of a mentally exhausted neighborhood so beaten down and regressed by daily victimization that rioting in the streets and blood in the gutter is tantamount to ejaculatory celebration. To come away with the message "violence isn't the answer" at film's end, where Kersey grasps his suitcases and heroically marches down a street littered with flaming cars, dead bodies, and screaming police sirens—it's the lone rider leaving that Old West town at sun-up—is to embrace your delusion. Death Wish 3 makes one thing very clear: violence works—works well, works often, and should be utilized for every possible situation. (Director Winner was attacked by critics in reviews for all of his Death Wish entries, but especially for Death Wish 3, and accused of encouraging private justice and vigilantism as a means for obtaining law and order. Though he would occasionally go on record to refute this, he had, contrarily, made donations to the "Guardian Angels," a self-professed vigilante group based out of New York.)

Death Wish 3 is also the first entry to realize that entire communities can joyfully join in on the bloodletting, and casts a swath of recognizable faces to watch Kersey's back or carry his ammo. Chief among them is Psycho's Martin Balsam, the elderly tenant who befriends Kersey, and who is not only at the end of his rope, but who also inexplicably owns the M60 that Kersey will use against dozens of gang members right around the time your pants suddenly feel little tighter around the crotch. Bringing up the rear is the immortal Ed Lauter as Shriker, the city lieutenant who has had enough of the violence plaguing his jurisdiction. And speaking of Lauter, and based on how Death Wish 3 concludes, the fact that no one thought to have Kersey and Shriker team up as pissed-off vigilante partners taking on one violence-plagued city at a time in a super-entertaining Death Wish 4 will forever haunt pretty much everyone who is just now realizing how tremendous such a concept would have been.

Death Wish 4: Shrike of the Kersey.

Death Wish 4: Kerse of the Shriker.

Regardless of your title of choice, just think of the poster! 

All of the above is not to be misinterpreted as condemnation; rather, it's the reason Death Wish 3 was, and continues to be, as celebrated as it is. As an honorable sequel to an iconic film, it completely shits the bed, but as a piece of action cinema, its sheer entertainment value is both matched by and heightened because of how spectacularly it fails at preserving the commentary and conflict of the original concept that paved the way for its existence in the first place. Most audiences don't want to be preached to, they want to be titillated. But Death Wish 3 doesn't just want to titillate, it wants to mutilate as a means to titillate—and it's so, so good at that.

THE GOOD GUY

Paul Kersey. Self-confessed liberal. Conscientious objector. Amateur oral surgeon. Exuberant life-taker. Inmate beater. Stuffed cabbage consumer. Ice cream licker. Asshole bait. One-man apocalypse.

The introduction to this column mentions "the guy in a suit with a gun" films of the 1970s, which were a temporary stopping point between the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and the gloriousness of the 1980s. These '70s comprised guys like Clint Eastwood, Roy Scheider, Lee Marvin, and even Walter Matthau, domestically, and blokes like Michael Caine, internationally, all doing their thing with a single pistol tucked somewhere between their tweed sport coat and brown turtleneck. Physically, the men were rather average, even scrawny, so they depended on their performances rather than ludicrous musculature to exude intimidation. Also born during this era was the realization that Charles Bronson, despite his tiny uncle-like stature and his strange anonymous hybrid of ethnicities (dude looks Mexican, Asian, and Native American all at once), was a remarkable bad-ass. Though he never achieved the same level of critical acclaim as his fellow suit-wearing bad-asses, as he often fell victim to just playing Charles Bronson on-screen, his name is one that often comes up in conversations akin to what this column is celebrating—he sort of one-man army who speaks softly and carries a giant fucking Wildey Magnum.

Bronson wasn't terribly happy during production or with the film's final product, but you'd never know it. There's an unmistakable gleam in his eyes during certain scenes—usually the ones that make clear the knowledge that he will destroy you with ease—and a certain affability seems to be draping over this once tragic character. It's understandable that Bronson likely became disenchanted by the exploitation of his Death Wish series after the first film had actually gone on to achieve a modicum of critical acclaim, but a part of him seems almost relieved that, though Death Wish 3 was probably beneath him, he was finally able to let Kersey have some fun. There would be no raped and ass-defaced housekeepers, and no suicidal daughters hurling themselves onto wrought-iron fences. There would simply be Kersey and his textbook mechanisms for removing life-forces from Planet Earth. Except for a couple of sad-face reaction shots, there'd be nothing so emotionally wrenching that it couldn't be overcome with a spring-loaded mouth smasher. His eyes sparkle as his cartoonishly large firearm arrives in the mail—one used for "big African game hunting"—even referring to it by its model name, "Wildey," which offers it a strangely feminine identity and an even stranger sense of sexual dependency. He proudly shows off his homemade booby traps to the curious and the intrigued, who delight in his sociopathic craftsmanship. Hell, he's no longer waiting for the little sons of bitches to make the first move, and is instead baiting them with shiny Cadillacs and expensive cameras slung around his neck as he takes a leisurely stroll around the ghetto licking his ice cream cone. But to make sure Kersey remains extra incensed, the film goes out of its way to introduce an arbitrary lawyer character (Deborah Raffin) just long enough for the audience to think Kersey might have found his replacement wife before she is quite violently killed, making Kersey's blood-thirst insurmountable.

Let it be known that none of this is something with which one should take umbrage: in case you missed it, this is Death Wish: Part Three.

THE BAD GUY

Manny Fraker. Gang leader. Rapist. Albino. Face-paint enthusiast. Geriatric killer. Prank caller. Gang members union delegate. Future impressionist art project.

Gavan O'Herilhy has one of those faces you just want to punch, which makes him an ideal person to play a villain. O'Herilhy has had a long career as an actor, but also sports one of those resumes filled with titles that don't sound all that familiar. His Fraker isn't exactly stand-out here, nor particularly memorable, but with him presiding over literally hundreds of gang members, all of whom commit most of the bodily harm and explosions, it's easy for him to become lost in the film and not make that big of a splash beyond his weird appearance. In keeping with the up-the-ante traditions of the sequel, Death Wish 3 works much better as having a sea of gang members serving as one foe rather than attempting to offer any of them a specific identity, but with Kersey working alongside his neighbors as well as members of the city police even though he's the hero, there needed to be a face to represent the threat of the bad guys, and what better face than the one that belongs to Gavan O'Herilhy...that you want to punch. (P.S. He is the son of actor Dan O'Herlihy, who also knows a little something about insane Part Threes: he played Conal Cochran in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.)

Maintaining accidental Death Wish tradition, Death Wish 3 sports several different "Hey, it's that guy!"-type appearances from then-unknown recognizable people. In Death Wish, one of the roving and raping gang members was played by none other than Jeff Goldblum; in Death Wish 2, the rape honor went to Laurence Fishburne; and now, in Death Wish 3, it's Alex Winter's turn to sport the leather jacket and come on way too strong. (For fun, we can conclude with Danny Trejo in Death Wish 4 and Robert Joy in Death Wish 5, neither of whom rape, but both of whom turn into dummies before going full-inferno.)

THE CASUALTIES

The Bad Guys

Between Kersey and his new neighbors, Fraker's gang members endure the following: two are shot in the chest; one suffers a gigantic Wildey-sized hole; one turns into a dummy and is thrown out a window; sixteen are shredded by an M60, four of whom then crash their car and explode; 21 are Wildey-shot, one of whom falls out a window after turning into a dummy; four are clothes-lined off their motorcycles by chains and executed in a hail of bullets; one is thrown down the stairs; one is shot by a cop; one is shot by a zip gun; and two are shotgunned and broom-pushed out a window, respectively.

All in all, Kersey takes the lives of 43 assholes, including the main bad guy. That not only blows all the other Death Wish flicks out of the water twice over, but it's quite possibly a career high for Charles Bronson in general. Second banana Lt. Shriker even manages a respectable eight executions—and this coming from a guy who earlier in the film makes it apparent he can't take part in vigilantism by citing "[he's] a cop." Way to finally see the light, Ed Lauter!

The Good Guys

One gang member whose gang application was rejected is stabbed in the throat while another is pipe-beaten to death; one neighbor's wife is raped (thankfully offscreen) and her arm broken in the process, which somehow leads to her demise; one elderly wife has her throat cut; one old man is set on fire; two cops are shot by an MP5; and a married couple are set on fire and gunned down.

THE BEST KILL

Big, big fan of the one gang member who gets the spring-propelled dagger through the brain. Honorable mention goes to any death that results in the use of a dummy, because seriously, the amount of delight that comes from seeing what's clearly a dummy plummeting from a window and landing unconvincingly on a car windshield is the stuff of dreams.

THE DAMAGE

Well...nothing really. Had Kersey not run around with a bulletproof vest, he would have succumbed either from the switchblade in his kidney or the bullets in his back. The worst thing that happens to him is when he has sex with a lawyer and then she explodes.

Shriker takes a shot to the shoulder, which he dismisses as "just a nick" because Ed Lauter is Lord of the Bad-Asses.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

Fraker takes a half-dozen bogus rounds to the chest, which are blocked by his own bulletproof vest, but Kersey thinks quickly by blowing him to smithereens with a rocket launcher. And even though the remaining gang members still outnumber the neighborhood citizens by roughly five-to-one, they all look really sad about this and silently agree to retreat. Good guys win! Thanks, absurd violence!

THE LINE

Death Wish 3 ain't exactly big on dialogue, as this is definitely one flick where the carnage does all the talking. Having said that, one of the best lines of the entire running time belongs to one word...

Kersey has just set up a Kevin McCallister-inspired booby trap involving a couple springs and a wooden plank on the floor near a window that gang members use to enter one particular apartment. This plank ends up cracking a gang member right in the mouth, who retreats soon after. The oft-victimized tenants look down at the objects now embedded in the wooden board. "What are those?" they ask, perplexed. "Teeth!" Kersey replies, grinning widely, his glee paramount. In this moment, no one has ever looked happier about mutilating another human being.

Worthy runner-up is Shriker shooting Alex Winter and then bellowing to Kersey, "I owed you that one, dude!"

THE VERDICT

In a way, Death Wish 3 kind of pre-staled the rest of the sequels that would follow (1987's The Crackdown and 1994's The Face of Death, which between the two of them would likely set around thirty-dozen dummies on fire). This second sequel had taken the series so far off the rails in terms of achieving any kind of artistic merit that there was no turning back, but it also painted itself into a corner, because unless Paul Kersey, who was now entirely out of family to be killed off, would be the one to perish at the hands of gang members and then come back from the dead to avenge himself before taking on an entire city with a tank and a collection of conflagratory weapons, the series was never going to top itself. That's not to say the final two Death Wish sequels aren't ludicrous, because they are (the latter has a scene where Kersey dispatches someone with a soccer ball bomb), but with their reduced body counts and with Bronson's evident evaporating level of enthusiasm for what the series had become, it's safe to say that Death Wish 3 was the last truly great chapter in the story of this vigilante—depending, of course, on what your definition of "great" actually entails.