Death Wish 3

The point where the series abandons realism entirely and becomes a cartoon of urban warfare. Paul Kersey returns to a New York overrun by a single impossibly large gang and defends a neighbourhood with increasingly military hardware, culminating in a small war fought with a mounted machine gun.

Michael Winner directs it as pure crowd-pleasing carnage with no pretence of the first film's moral unease, and audiences who wanted exactly that were well served. It is ridiculous and knows it.

The vigilante cycle collapsing joyfully into self-parody.