Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

Dir: J. Lee Thompson

1987

****

Death Wish 3 was a ridiculous film, but it made money, and if there was one thing the Cannon group was good at, it was flogging a dead horse with huge sums of money. Cannon Films announced Death Wish 4 in 1986, estimating that it would be ready for release by spring 1987, even though the film company was by this point facing huge financial problems. Its greatest box office hit was still 1984’s Missing in Action with $38 million domestic gross and Cannon had lost money through huge box office flops. We might look back at the films they made now with nostalgic whimsy but their films sucked at the time. So by the time Death Wish 4 came along they tightened the budgets of all their upcoming films to under $5 million per movie. They reached an agreement with independent producer Pancho Kohner, son of Paul Kohner - Paul Kohner being the agent of Charles Bronson. Pancho himself had produced seven previous Bronson films, so the men trusted each other and decided to take the franchise down a route of their choosing. Michael Winner did not return to direct, with the excuse at the time being that he was working on another project at the time but the truth is he was never asked. Bronson was displeased with their previous collaboration and decided to work with J. Lee Thompson, who he had worked with in several previous films, and had also had a good working relationship with the producers of Cannon Films. Writing duties were ultimately assigned to Gail Morgan Hickman, who had previously contributed rejected scripts for Death Wish 3. Hickman's first script, which had Paul Kersey struggling with a crisis of conscience was rejected. The second script, which had Kersey going after an international terrorist, was rejected due to its premise having similarities to 1987’s Wanted: Dead or Alive. Disheartened, probably, Hickman decided to just copy Akira Kurasowa’s Yojimbo, although he might have been copying Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, it is unclear, but it’s the same story. He later said in an interview that Cannon producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus wanted a mindless movie with nonstop action, so he came up with "cartoonish" action scenes especially for them. Hickman also admitted that he wrote the film as they filmed it, being called by Bronson himself to re-write scenes on a daily basis. In this fourth instalment, Kersey has a crackdown. Erica Sheldon (Dana Barron), the teenage daughter of Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz – who was only 12 years older than her screen daughter), Paul Kersey's current girlfriend, goes with boyfriend Randy Viscovich (Jesse Dabson) to an arcade to meet up with a man named JoJo Ross (Héctor Mercado) and another buddy, Jesse Winters (Tim Russ). JoJo offers her crack cocaine behind her boyfriend’s back, and she later dies from an overdose. Having seen Erica smoke a joint with Randy while in his car the previous night, Paul suspects Randy was involved with Erica's death, so he follows him to the arcade. Randy confronts JoJo and threatens to go to the police. JoJo murders Randy to prevent this. Paul then promptly shoots JoJo, who falls onto the roof of the bumper-car ride and is electrocuted. At home, Paul receives a package indicating the sender knows he's "the vigilante," and a phone call threatening to go to the police if Paul won't meet. Paul is taken to the mansion of the secretive tabloid publisher Nathan White (John P. Ryan). Nathan says that his daughter became addicted to drugs and eventually died of an overdose, so he wants to hire Paul to wipe out the drug trade in LA. There are two major gangs competing for the local drug supply: one led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez), the other by brothers Jack (Mike Moroff) and Tony Romero (Dan Ferro). Kersey accepts and Nathan supplies him with weapons and information. Meanwhile, LA detectives Sid Reiner (George Dickerson) and Phil Nozaki (Soon-Tek Oh) investigate the arcade deaths. Paul infiltrates Zacharias's manor as a party bartender. After bugging a phone, he witnesses Zacharias murder a colleague who has stolen a big deal of cocaine from the cartel's South American connection. Zacharias discovers Paul but doesn't realize why he's there. He then orders Paul to help carry out the dead body, motioning to his henchman, Al Arroyo, to kill Paul when they're done. After Paul helps put the corpse in the trunk of a car, he kills Arroyo with the car's trunk cover and escapes. Paul proceeds to kill three of Ed Zacharias's favoured hitmen at a restaurant with a bomb concealed in a wine bottle. He kills drug dealer Max Green (Tom Everett), leader of Romeros' street dealers, disguised as a sex video trader. He confronts the Romeros's top hitman Frank Bauggs (David Wolos-Fonteno) in order to find out more about their cartel, but a fight ensues and Bauggs falls off his apartment to his death. A few days later, Nathan instructs Paul to go to San Pedro, Los Angeles, where a local fisherman wharf acts as a front for Zacharias's drug operations. Breaking in, Paul kills eight more criminals and blows up the drug processing room with a bomb. Detective Nozaki reveals himself to be a corrupt cop working for Zacharias, and demands that Paul tell him who he works for. Paul refuses and kills him. He lures Zacharias and the Romero brothers into a trap, leading to a shootout in an oil field in which both cartels are completely destroyed. Paul personally kills Zacharias with a high-powered rifle. Nathan congratulates Paul, but sets him up with a car bomb. Enraged, Paul returns to the White Manor only to find a stranger who claims to be the real Nathan White; the impersonator who hired Paul was actually a third drug lord who used him to dispose of the rival cartels. Paul is approached by two cops, who arrest him, but he recognizes them as fakes, causes their car to flip over, and escapes. To get rid of Paul, the Nathan White impersonator kidnaps and uses Karen as a bait. Detective Reiner waits inside Paul's apartment to kill him out of vengeance for Nozaki's murder, but Paul knocks him out. He arms himself with a M16 with a M203 grenade launcher and goes to the meeting place designated by the drug lord, the parking lot of White's commercial building. The car rolls forward and the drug dealers spray it with bullets before realizing that Paul's not in it. Paul fires a grenade, destroying a van full of bandits, then fires another to kill Jesse as he betrays his crew and tries to drive away. Paul follows White into a roller rink and decimates the rest of his drug gang, but the drug lord escapes through a back door, still holding Karen hostage. Karen attempts to escape, but the drug lord shoots from behind and kills her. Distraught over Karen's death and realizing that White has run out of bullets, Paul fires a last grenade that finishes him off. Reiner arrives and orders him to surrender, threatening to shoot as Paul walks away. Paul replies, "Do whatever you have to", and Reiner lets him go. The story is rubbish and is a cheap knock-off but the cartoonish action sequences are brilliant. The scene where a badly sculpted mannequin of Danny Trejo is blown up is one of my favourite scenes of all time. I’ve watched it on repeat many times over and is worth watching the film for. It’s classic Cannon, Cannon at its most desperate. It lost money and was as bad as everyone expected, but it’s so incredibly bad, that it’s also extremely watchable.