Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

The Worst Film Ever

Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely the worst movie.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey takes on the members of a vicious Los Angeles drug cartel to stop the flow of drugs after his girlfriend's daughter dies from an overdose. Death Wish 4 is fun, action packed and once again Charles Bronson steals the show. Now to be honest i still loved Part 3 a bit more than this but there were still some amazing action scenes like the opening dream sequence plus there's an awesome plot twist in the movie regarding a character. Overall Death Wish IV is an 80's underrated classic!!!

Paul Kersey (Bronson) is back to wipe out an entire drug cartel, to be honest, two. He's got a new girlfriend with a daughter but once the daughter overdosed it's time to hunt. Better than part 3 but this time it do moves slowly and clocking in over 90 minutes it's a bit to long. Storywise it's only the name Kersey that makes references toward the 1974 original, this is more a typical Cannon (the distributors) action movie then a revenge flick. On part of the effects, this maybe is the best of the franchise. And for the freaks, Danny Trejo is to spot in the Italian restaurant.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2,5/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Sequel to successful crime thriller that created the Vigilante genre with Bronson as the main star as architect Paul Kersey turned the one-man vigilante when his family is attacked by furious band formed by some ominous punks , as his wife is murdered and daughter reduced to living vegetable ; he then stalks the slums of N.Y. and searching crooks , hoodlums , muggers , pimps making the neighborhood safer and bumping off delinquents and street scum . This fourth entry with excessive violence concerns about Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson was about sixty-five years of age when he appeared in this one), a middle-age New York architect and become again into vigilante . Nowadays , he lives in Los Angeles along with his girlfriend (Kay Lenz) and her daughter . Paul takes on the members of a vicious Los Angeles drug cartel led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez) to stop the flow of crack after his girlfriend's daughter (Dana Barron , though Kay Lenz is only 13 years older than Dana) dies from an overdose. Then Paul Kersey wiping out the bands suppling drugs . This fourth outing from the novel ¨Death wish¨ by Brian Garfield in which an architect taking the law into his own hands and acting as judge , jury and executioner ; it contains suspense, noisy action-packed , intrigue , thrills and lots of violence . Bronson with his usual stoic acting displays efficiently his weapons such as ¨Harry the Dirty¨ and killing mercilessly nasties . Screenwriter Gail Morgan Hickman re-wrote the entire script while filming but Charles Bronson constantly had problems with the dialog . It's certainly thrilling , though the morality may be questionable , even in this time, as the spectators were clearly on the Kersey-Bronson's side . This movie represents the seventh of nine teamings of director J. Lee Thompson with star actor Charles Bronson . Both of whom worked together nine times , this sequel was the only 'Death Wish' movie of the five film series that they made together . The two first collaborated on St Ives (1976), White Buffalo (1977), Cabo Blanco (1980), Ten to midnight (1983) , The Evil That Men Do (1984) Murphy Law (1986). After this movie, they made Messenger of Death (1988) and Kinjite (1989). Furthermore , it appears a nice secondary cast , as George Dickerson , Soon-Tek Oh as obstinate cops , John P Ryan , Danny Barron , Danny Tejo , Mark Pellegrino and as heinous drug baron , Perry Lopez . It packs a screeching musical score composed, orchestrated and performed by John Bisharat , Paul McCallum and Valentine McCallum ; the studio, Cannon : Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan along with executive producer Pancho Kohner wanted a more muscular sounding score for the action scenes and decided to re-use much of the music from their past action efforts Missing in action (1984) and Invasion USA (1985). The original film ¨Death wish¨ had great commercial hit , it was followed by various extremely violent sequels to this successful 1974 movie , that's , of course , the best from the series . This first big hit motion picture was middling directed by Michael Winner such as the successive films with his main star, Charles Bronson , usually giving wooden performance . In the mid-70 Winner , in need to other hit smashes attempted with the sequels , but both , Bronson and Winner , looked increasingly passionless and mechanical in the later years of their partnership in this cheap as well as worn-out final series. The worst sequels in which Kersey goes on to torture robbers , all of them inferior and the violence could be deemed exaggerated , they are the followings : ¨Death wish II¨ by Michael Winner with Jill Ireland , Anthony Franciosa , JD Cannon and Vincent Gardenia , ¨Death Wish III¨ by Winner with Ed Lauter , Martin Balsam and Deborah Raffin . However , Michael Winner showed no interest in directing Death Wish 4 because he had heard that Charles Bronson had a terrible experience filming Death Wish III (1985). And this ¨Death Wish 4 : The crackdown¨(1987) with Kay Lenz directed by J.Lee Thompson and finally ¨Death Wish : The face of death¨(1994)that would be the last and it was then not made for about another seven years , being starred by with Leslie Anne Down , Michael Parks , Chuck Shamata and poorly directed by Allan Goldstein . In addition , an intended but unfilmed sixth movie was also to have a subtitle: 'Death Wish 6: The New Vigilante'.

In terms of craft this is a major step up from part 3, but it's a lazy film from talented people that just seem to be going through the motions. I'm not expecting a masterpiece called Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, but franchise fatigue bogs this bore down. The over the top camp of part 3 has been toned down to near flat-line levels and the plot twists are either telegraphed a mile away or nonsense. Simply nothing is memorable. Cannon films was near bankrupt by the time part 4 went into production and reduced the budget from the already threadbare budgets of the previous films. The result is having the script limit the story to a few lame locations that they either got for cheap or probably knew the property owner - like the oil field. After a decade of being in low budget exploitation director's jail, this is a easy money grab and a lazy job from J. Lee Thompson.