Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is set in Los Angeles where architect & ex vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has been happily living with his girlfriend Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz) & her teenage daughter Erica (Dana Barron). While out with her boyfriend Randy (Jesse Dabson) Erica is given some cocaine by a dealer, later that night Paul & Karen get a phone call to say Erica is in hospital because of an overdose. They rush to be with her but it's too late & Karen dies. The following day Paul is contacted by supposed newspaper publisher Nathan White (John P. Ryan) who says that he too lost a daughter to drugs & that all drug dealers & smugglers deserve to die & if Kersey wants to dole out a little justice to the drug dealers in Los Angeles he will finance it & give Kersey all the information he has, never one to turn down the opportunity to kill some scum Kersey agrees & sets-out to bring the Los Angeles drug trade & those who run it down all by himself...
Directed by J. Lee Thompson after Michael Winner declined to come back to the series after directing the first three Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a better film than Death Wish 3 (1985) but isn't quite as much fun or quite as entertaining. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is more of a straight laced thriller in the style of the often imitated Yojimbo (1961) in which Bronson plays two rival drug gangs off against each other in order that they will literally wipe each other out but with a few Death Wish style touches like rape, dirty cops & yet another person close to Kersey getting killed. I mean it's just dangerous to know this guy as your likely to either end up raped or murdered. Unlike Death Wish 3 which was a really silly & mindless exploitation flick Death Wish 4: The Crackdown tries to have a little social relevance & bases it's unfortunate events around drugs, the perils of taking drugs & the evils of pushing drugs. In fact the film starts off quite anti drug with a tour around an LA county morgue in which most of the bodies there are drug related & Karen a journalist trying to write a story about the dangers of drugs but even her editor saying no-one cares anymore but this moral preaching & social message is soon completely ditched in favour of a fairly entertaining action thriller as Bronson plays the two gangs off one another & if you throw in a couple of neat twists then this really ain't too bad. Death Wish 3 had everyone know who everyone else was & Bronson was the face of vigilantism but here he stays in the shadows & the two drug gangs don't know who he is which makes for a more plausible if not entirely realistic film too. There's also a terrific dialogue exchange here that is maybe the hight light of the series where a dirty cop threatens Bronson & says 'I can be very nasty' before Bronson blows him away with a concealed gun & replies without a hint of irony 'so can I'. The pace is generally good but although it's an improvement on the previous film in terms of plot, themes & narrative there's a loss of entertainment value somehow, it's just not as much fun even if it does work better as a film.
The film looks alright, it's much more competent than Winner's Death Wish 3 but again somehow it just loses a little entertainment value because of it. The violence is kept to shoot-outs & bloody gunshot wounds along with a brief rape at the start. I have to hand it to John P. Ryan who gives it his all & just check out his 80's clothes at the end. The action scenes are workman like & are not particularly memorable but get the done. Bronson also scales down his arsenal here too so there's no rocket launchers or huge machine guns.
With a supposed budget of about $5,000,000 this has solid if unspectacular production values, the action scenes are alright if a little flat & I would have liked to have seen more things explode. Explosions are good. Again Bronson stars & actually comes across as quite tough while John P. Ryan is a total hoot here.
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a decent enough vigilante flick with a hint of Yojimbo thrown in there, it's not brilliant but it's not too bad either. Fans of the series should like it, followed by one more sequel Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994).
Directed by J. Lee Thompson after Michael Winner declined to come back to the series after directing the first three Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a better film than Death Wish 3 (1985) but isn't quite as much fun or quite as entertaining. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is more of a straight laced thriller in the style of the often imitated Yojimbo (1961) in which Bronson plays two rival drug gangs off against each other in order that they will literally wipe each other out but with a few Death Wish style touches like rape, dirty cops & yet another person close to Kersey getting killed. I mean it's just dangerous to know this guy as your likely to either end up raped or murdered. Unlike Death Wish 3 which was a really silly & mindless exploitation flick Death Wish 4: The Crackdown tries to have a little social relevance & bases it's unfortunate events around drugs, the perils of taking drugs & the evils of pushing drugs. In fact the film starts off quite anti drug with a tour around an LA county morgue in which most of the bodies there are drug related & Karen a journalist trying to write a story about the dangers of drugs but even her editor saying no-one cares anymore but this moral preaching & social message is soon completely ditched in favour of a fairly entertaining action thriller as Bronson plays the two gangs off one another & if you throw in a couple of neat twists then this really ain't too bad. Death Wish 3 had everyone know who everyone else was & Bronson was the face of vigilantism but here he stays in the shadows & the two drug gangs don't know who he is which makes for a more plausible if not entirely realistic film too. There's also a terrific dialogue exchange here that is maybe the hight light of the series where a dirty cop threatens Bronson & says 'I can be very nasty' before Bronson blows him away with a concealed gun & replies without a hint of irony 'so can I'. The pace is generally good but although it's an improvement on the previous film in terms of plot, themes & narrative there's a loss of entertainment value somehow, it's just not as much fun even if it does work better as a film.
The film looks alright, it's much more competent than Winner's Death Wish 3 but again somehow it just loses a little entertainment value because of it. The violence is kept to shoot-outs & bloody gunshot wounds along with a brief rape at the start. I have to hand it to John P. Ryan who gives it his all & just check out his 80's clothes at the end. The action scenes are workman like & are not particularly memorable but get the done. Bronson also scales down his arsenal here too so there's no rocket launchers or huge machine guns.
With a supposed budget of about $5,000,000 this has solid if unspectacular production values, the action scenes are alright if a little flat & I would have liked to have seen more things explode. Explosions are good. Again Bronson stars & actually comes across as quite tough while John P. Ryan is a total hoot here.
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a decent enough vigilante flick with a hint of Yojimbo thrown in there, it's not brilliant but it's not too bad either. Fans of the series should like it, followed by one more sequel Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994).