: "This film is 'about' the fragility of the film medium and human vulnerability; both the filmic and the human images resist threat/intimidation/mutilation: the victim is defiant and the film strip also struggles on, both 'under fire'. It is a somewhat violent drama but it is also an ironically comic work and there is a formal beauty in the destructiveness of the burning film. While the film (from section to section) develops, becomes more visually complex, successively regenerates (as the figurative images degenerate), it nevertheless implies not finality; rather, 3rd Degree implies endurability and on-goingness." (P.S.)