Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (

1987

)

I suspect that Michael Winner has the same opinion I do about the self-evident magnificence of Death Wish 3 (1985) because rather than try to top himself with yet another sequel, he quietly bowed out. The studio bosses at Cannon Group were not so easily deterred, so long as the films remained profitable they were determined to keep going as long as they could wring a few pennies out of the property. With Winner out of the picture, they just brought in J. Lee Thompson to direct the fourth entry. The choice makes sense as Thompson had collaborated with star Charles Bronson six times already, and obviously knew how to work with the actor. Thompson was also decidedly on the back nine of his career by this point, having never equaled the artistic or financial success he achieved in the early 1960s with films like Cape Fear (1962) and The Guns of Navarone (1961), and would consequently be within the modest budget of Cannon Group. Unfortunately, Thompson is evidential of the mind that Death Wish was a good film when it was a serious movie about serious issues, rather than an absurdly over-the-top tale of one retiree mowing down a whole criminal empire with a Browning Machine gun. So, expect toned down action scenes and high-handed moralism in place of fun and excitement.

Once again, Paul Kersey has resigned from his personal war against crime, preferring to live a quiet life with his latest flame, journalist Karen Sheldon and her daughter Erica. Honestly, this is one thing I just don’t get about Kersey’s character. A guy losing his family and taking vengeance on a never-ending stream of petty criminals makes sense, but one that stops every other year or so and waits for another tragedy to befall him before returning to the vigilante lifestyle is absurd. Having it happen once or twice is fine, but by episode 4 of this series, it’s starting to look like Paul Kersey was cursed by a gypsy just before Death Wish (1974). Seriously, there’s unlucky and then there’s periodically having your loved ones murdered every 2-5 years. I’m amazed that Kersey hasn’t decided to live as a bachelor and content himself with the occasional fling, given the short life-expectancy of his romantic partners.

Naturally, an ill fate befalls Erica while she’s out on a date at a video arcade with her boyfriend, Randy. Modern audiences may be a little surprised to see an arcade presented as a den of sin and depravity, rather than a place to fleece nerdy middle schoolers out of their parents’ quarters, but this is a product of the late 80s milieu. Before Doom [1993], it was hard to convince anyone that primitive pixels and blooping noises of early video games would turn children into spree killers, but as we know puritans are less worried about tangible effects and more concerned that somewhere, someone might be having fun. If games could not be targeted as a danger to society, then the places they were housed would have to do. If you combed through the historical records I’m sure you could pull up a few instances of crimes taking place at arcades but no more than anywhere else in the surrounding city. Indeed, crimes like drug-dealing were probably more difficult to pull off in the arcade than outside it, because the bad reputation of these venues prompted staff to patrol them more vigilantly. This is a late entry into the Death Wish franchise though, and it is not exactly concerned with holding a mirror up to reality. So instead of a clean and well-staffed location, this arcade is filthy, dark and completely devoid of any adult supervision.

Erica and Randy score some drugs, with Erica being given a special substance that the dealer warns her not to split with Randy or even let him know that she has it. Next thing we know, Erica is in the hospital, dying from cardiac arrest. Obviously, you do not kill someone close to Paul Kersey and get off scot-free, so Kersey tracks down the drug dealer that poisoned his daughter-in-law and blows him away. He must be pretty rusty though, as he doesn’t bother to blast the scumbag in a more isolated area and just wastes him right in the middle of the arcade, leaving plenty of eye-witnesses including one who can identify the make, color and even the partial license plate of his car. Kersey soon finds himself on a very short list of suspects, and once ballistics ties the gun he used to the earlier vigilante killings (since Kersey has returned to California in this movie, I suspect they are referring to the events of Death Wish 2 (1982)), the heat ramps up considerable.

The cops aren’t the only ones who know about Kersey though, newspaper tycoon Nathan White has also discovered the identity of the vigilante. White, who has lost a daughter to drugs, is keen on using Kersey to wage a one-man war on the Los Angeles drug trade. There are two main drug cartels in the city, one led by Ed Zacharias, the other headed by Jack and Tony Romero. These gangs have co-existed in an uneasy peace for some time now, and White is confident that with some prodding from his pet vigilante he can get the two of them to eradicate one another. Paul sets to work with gusto, bugging phones to get information (which only comes in handy once but hey, whatever works) and assassinating key members of the two crime organizations. Neither gang is willing to start an open war though, as the damages done to their business interests would be catastrophic even if they win. So, Zacharias arranges a meeting with the Romeros to see if they can’t hash the conflict out before it gets any worse. Kersey is waiting for them though, with a high-powered sniper rifle. A couple of shots from Kersey trigger a full-fledged shoot-out, and then the vigilante has to only pick off the last few survivors.

That’s pretty straightforward, but hasn’t everything wrapped up a lot sooner than is normal for these movies? Well, remember the drugs that Erica did that sent her to the hospital? As it turns out that wasn’t just a random accident, it was all planned because a third gangster wanted to break in on the territory held by Zacharias and the Romeros and figured the easiest way to do that would be to get the famous vigilante to do the dirty work for them. That man was none other than Nathan White, and now that the two rivals are out of the way White just needs to kill Kersey to tie up all the loose ends. This is one of those cases where the filmmakers decided they wanted to have a twist first and then tried to dream one up afterwards. It doesn’t make any sense when you look at it for more than a few minutes. Why involve a criminal-killing badass like Kersey if you don’t have too? Surely you know what he did to those creeps in NYC a couple of years ago, do you really think your gang stands much of a chance? Indeed, why not just spark the gang war yourself, Kersey doesn’t do anything which couldn’t be accomplished by a team of your goons.

While Kersey is off doing what he normally does in these movies, Karen is busy writing an expose on the drug trade. It’s an endeavor that provides the film with ample chance for sanctimonious moralizing, which feels out of place in the larger context of the series. Death Wish has never been a particularly moral story. Before Death Wish 3 (1985) Paul Kersey was no comic book vigilante, fighting the criminals that the police cannot handle. Even then, it was implied that if the police sacked-up a bit they would be able to handle the criminal scum in their midst easily enough. In most of the films, Kersey kills not out of necessity, but to feed his own appetite for revenge. Rather than give us any moral guidelines, Death Wish has always offered a cathartic release to audiences who may have fantasized about doing the same thing as Kersey to the various criminals who had victimized them and their loved ones. This cathartic fantasy fits poorly with the “Just Say No” politics of Death Wish 4 because the people most victimized by the drug trade (the junkies themselves) are willing participants. Even if the anti-drug message gelled with Death wish’s overall appeal, I still would be insulted by the ham-fisted way in which it is delivered. Karen goes to a morgue and asks to see all the drug-related victims, and they are all, to a man, children and older teens dead from increasingly contrived causes that are in some cases only tangentially related to their addiction. To wit, the child prostitute who was strangled by her John could hardly be said to be a drug-related death (even if she was only turning tricks to feed her addiction). At times the message is so blunt that it becomes laughable, like when the film flat-out states: "Anybody connected with drugs deserves to die" but for the most part it’s just dull and annoying.

Until Nathan White reveals himself as the ultimate bad guy, Death Wish 4 really suffers when its villains are compared to the baddies in previous entries. The drug dealers are no angels, unlike previous villains, there is no cruelty or sadism in their action just ruthlessness and greed. Sure, I’d like to see them behind bars, but I don’t particularly want to watch them die. When the Creeps fell victim to an army of outraged citizens at the climax of Death Wish 3 (1985), I was fully onboard with their violent demise. Here, it just rings hollow. The action is livened up a bit by some absurd weapons, Kersey gravitates towards bombs and grenades in this film, which while fun to see in action are probably not the sort of weapon someone should use if they are at all concerned about collateral damage. White’s appearance as the real bad guy offers some relief for the problems earlier in the film, but even so, he is not built up anywhere near the villains from Death Wish 3 (1985).

There are moments of brilliance glitter among the grime though. I thought it was a nice touch that whenever Paul needs to use an alias he gives Kimble, the fake name he used at the start of Death Wish 3 (1985), a nice nod towards inter-film continuity. The final line, delivered while Kersey stalks away from the dead body of the latest woman with the misfortune of loving him, is nothing short of inspired. A cop spots Kersey and threatens to shoot if he doesn’t stop, Kersey replied with a callous disregard for both himself and the world around him “Do whatever you have to.” This exchange sums up the whole Death Wish franchise and the character of Paul Kersey very nicely. It’s a shame that we only get it at the ending of what is perhaps the weakest entry in the whole series.