Classic Movie Review: 'Death Wish 4: The Crackdown'

How in the world did the Death Wish franchise last for four movies? How did anyone with a brain figure that the story of vigilante Paul Kersey could simply linger for over a decade? It’s a bafflement and yet, in the first weekend of November, 1987, Cannon Films managed to release Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and it somehow wasn’t the last of this limping, moronic, gun crazy, alpha male fantasy franchise.

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown finds Paul Kersey living in Los Angeles and running his architectural firm. Paul is dating a journalist named Karen (Kay Lenz) who has a daughter named Erica (Dana Barron). One night Erica hits the town with her boyfriend and tries some cocaine and then dies from an overdose. The loss consumes both Karen and Paul as she sets about using her reporting to track down the bad guys while Paul does it his way, through vigilante justice.

After Paul murders the dealer he believes is directly responsible for Erica’s death, he finds he’s being watched. A man claiming to be Nathan White, a wealthy industrialist, wants to help Paul reap bloody vengeance on Los Angeles organized crime. He offers to get Paul the guns and the information he needs to battle the two biggest drug dealing factions in Los Angeles. Why? White claims to have had a daughter who also died from a drug overdose.

With White’s assistance, Paul begins murdering drug dealers on both sides of the two biggest crime families. While we are told that this is part of a plan by Paul to turn the two gangs against each other, ending their current détente, all we see is Paul randomly choosing targets on both sides and killing his way out of whatever spot he gets himself into. Paul is clumsy and slow but the movie makes up for it by making it seem as if he never misses, even as every drug dealer in Los Angeles couldn’t shoot water while standing on a dock.

Charles Bronson long ago gave up on acting in favor of collecting paychecks abusing his past glory. By the time Death Wish 4: The Crackdown was released, Bronson could hardly be bothered to deliver dialogue. Bronson is an almost spectral presence in Death Wish 4, we see barely more than a shadow of a man who mumbles a few lines and then shoots fake guns with barely an effort to make it seem as if he were aiming somewhere.

Bronson’s boredom approaches anti-comedy levels of absurdity in Death Wish 4. Watch the big climax of the movie wherein Paul is face to face with the big bad of the movie, a very obvious and poorly written twist, Bronson can barely be bothered to lift his massive gun to blow up the bad guy who has just murdered Karen right before his eyes. Bronson’s lack of investment and the highly comic fiery explosion death of the bad guy act as bizarre counterpoints to each other and make for a big unintentional laugh riot.

If Bronson can’t be bothered to be in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, why did anyone think people would want to watch it? Even the original theatrical trailer for Death Wish 4: The Crackdown seems to show Bronson barely holding back a yawn as he fights off numerous bad guys with the boy toy gun of the moment in 1987, the Uzi. Paul Kersey’s Uzi even has a silencer though why is a fair question, it’s not like Paul is worried about being caught, Bronson seems more nervous as to whether his paycheck will clear than he is whether the character of Paul Kersey makes sense after three sequels.

That there is a fifth Death Wish movie and soon to be a Death Wish remake starring Bruce Willis is a testament to the notion that Hollywood can’t find a bad idea that it won’t run into the ground as often as possible. Give a producer something with a modest amount of name recognition and they will beat on it like a piñata until every piece of candy has been consumed and then the piñata is recycled, refilled, beaten, and burned.