The Year of Cannon: Death Wish 4: The Crackdown! (1987)

Das Wish is AUGE!

I know, I know. I fell on my keys after having a pretty good track record of writing up a blog post once a month. I hope to get back on track as I made a promise to myself that I would write a post for every 'Year of' film that we do. I know you all were going through 'badly worded and spelled thoughts about movies most no one cares about' withdrawals. Well, I am here to bring that fabulous sugar smack back to your eyes and brains. Let's see if Charles Bronson will actually give a shit about the Cannon film he is in this time with my look at Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

Death Wish 4: WISH HARDER

When we last left Paul Kersey, aka Charles Bronson, at the end of Death Wish 3, he had turned a few New York City blocks into his own bombed out hellscape as he waged a one man war on a street gang that was pushing around the locals. You would think there would be a lot of questions from local and national authorities of what the hell exactly went on as there were rocket launchers used by private citizens, but nope, the local cops looked the other way and gave Kersey a head start out of town.

When we watched Death Wish 3 for the show, I knew there were two more films in the series but wasn't sure where they could take the series next as very quickly morphed from a meditative piece about the about what would drive a regular person to take the law into their own hands and the price it costs in the first film (with Paul Kersey being visibly shaken and having to throw up after the first time he shot someone), to him making the hunt for justice more personal in the second film, to a straight up Warner Brothers-esque cartoon about gang violence and the many ways Kersey could kill the gang members. Where could 4 go where the first three whiplashed to and fro from?

Oddly enough, somewhere in the middle. Death Wish 4 is a very interesting film until you realize that it isn't interested in pondering the bigger questions it asks on the fringes of the frame, that it just wants to get to Charles Bronson kicking ass and killing people in different ways.

Death Wish 4 starts off on familiar ground. It shows a lady taking a long way through a deserted parking garage. The series to this point has not been kind to pretty much any woman that shows her face on the screen and this one is no different (Sadly, this will pay off again at the end of the film... uh, spoiler I guess). She makes it to her car and it won't start. She sees a group of panty hose faced men in the distance and they rush her car and drag her our of it. Just as they are about to rape her, Kersey appears and kills two of them, clipping the third so he can't run away.

Slowly, the creep is hobbling away from Kersey, who is leisurely walking towards him. Kersey shoots the man, leaving him face down on the concrete. When Kersey flips him over so that the creep can stare Death in the face, this happens:

Anyone else find this sexy? Oh, just me? Okay. 

It is then revealed that Kersey is having a nightmare. Wow, I thought, Death Wish 4 is going to finally start to deal with Kersey's internal struggle with being the vigilante he has become in the first few films. Nope. That's left to the wayside as soon as we have a new target to hunt down. More on that in a second.

We then learn about what Kersey has been up to in the two years since he BLEW UP PARTS OF NEW YORK. He is back on the west coast (he originally left New York in the first film and ended up in Los Angeles in the second film. Maybe he still lived there during the third film; we don't know because third film just showed him taking a bus into New York at the start of it) and he is back at doing what he does second best, being an architect. He is in a committed relationship with a woman half his age, Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz), yet another staple of the Death Wish franchise. She is a crime reporter of a Los Angeles newspaper. She has a teenage daughter that looks up to Paul and wants to be an architect like him.

Perfect life for Paul 'Don't Worry I'm Not Going To Go Vigilantin' Again For A Fourth Time' Kersey. A Perfect life that is... until drugs show up.

Slow down there, you had me degradation.

Paul sees that Karen's daughter is going on a date with a guy who offers her a joint as she gets in his car. Kersey's Bronson-sense lights up and wonders if she will be okay. Karen insists that she will.

The daughter and her date end up at the 1980's pit of sin, the local arcade and meet up with two sketchy individuals, both are drug dealers but only one is Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager:

Getting high for this low low price is illogical, but great for business.

They give the girl a packet of 'special' drugs that turn out to be crack cocaine. This leads to her immediately overdosing off camera when Karen gets a phone call to come to the hospital. Minutes later, Karen and Paul see the girl die on the operating table.

Kersey first tries to track down the boyfriend, in hopes of seeing who he had gotten the drugs from. The boyfriend confronts the drug dealer that is not Tuvok and gets stabbed for it.

He was shocked that he lived as long as he did in a Death Wish film. 

This leads to Kersey chasing the drug dealer and shooting him, once again easily falling into the role of the vigilante. Though he got the payback from those directly responsible for the death of his girlfriend's daughter, all is not well.

We get a moment after the funeral when Karen is distraught and feels like there is nothing she could have done to stop this and feels so hopeless. Kersey reminds her that she is a writer for a big L.A. Newspaper and she should write about drugs and their impact on kids. She agrees with him and starts trying to get the bottom of the whole drug thing.

Wow, I thought, Death Wish 4 is going to deal with the idea that Paul Kersey might have to consider that not everything can be solved by violence. How do you fight an epidemic like drugs in the 1980's as one man with a gun? Are we in for a film in which Kersey works with his girlfriend to get evidence to bring people to justice?

*reads title of the film again* Oh, I forgot this was a Death Wish film, not a Maybe Not Shooting Bad Guys Is The Answer, Part 4.

We get one or two more scenes in which Karen is working at the newspaper, trying to get her editor to let her write a story on the cocaine epidemic in which he says 'Everyone's on drugs these days, no one cares.' Then she goes to a morgue to see the bodies of victims of cocaine abuse and she realizes with White Woman In The 1980's Horror, that all of the victims are pretty much kids. It's very heavy handed, but at least Death Wish 4 is trying to say something in its own messed up way. Karen is then pretty much fridged until the end of the film.

Soon Kersey finds out that someone knows of his past as the vigilante and has requested his presence to talk about a job. Kersey meets Mr. Nathan White (John P. Ryan, who we last saw as awesome scene chewing prison warden in Runaway Train), a wealthy man who recently lost a daughter to drugs. He wants Kersey to take out those that are in charge of the drug distribution in the greater Los Angeles area. White gives Kersey a blank check and access to whatever weapons he wants. Kersey does not take long to agree to do this. How do you fight an epidemic like drugs in the 1980's as one man with a gun? Evidently get a rich man to give you all of the money and all of the guns to shoot everyone else. That's how Chuck Bronson is going to win the war on drugs.

You might know me by my other name: Rich Moenymandian the 3rd.

The film then gets into an interesting groove in which Bronson is being given intel by White about all of the targets on his hit list, with narration from White explaining the background of those involved and the dangers associated with getting to each target. It felt very much like Death Wish 4 was suddenly a video game with Bronson having a specific scenario to accomplish each time, much like the Hitman video game franchise.

We see Bronson as a waiter at a fancy party for one head drug kingpins:

They say you don't have to tip the bartenders are parties, but trust me, you are going to want to tip this one. 

We never know how he got into the party, but we know never to ask Bronson too many questions or make direct eye contact.

Also, this has nothing to do with the plot or Paul Kersey's motivations, but this birthday cake was at the same party:

Um, I will take a thigh piece, I guess? 

Kersey then fakes being a wine salesman to get into an Italian restaurant where some of the drug kingpins hired guns have lunch. He tries to leave a 'free' bottle of wine with the men, but the delay him and make him sit down. Then this happens:

See? They didn't tip him. 

He then has to stop a movie theater to get more information from Mr. White. Notice anything in the background?

And that is about as much money as Cannon spent on advertising Runaway Train.
One poster, in the background of another movie.

I like that there is a poster for Runaway Train in the lobby and that Mr. White is making Kersey meet him during a screening of Otello. Both being Cannon films and with John P. Ryan being in Runaway Train, it was a fun little nod. Additionally, there is a video store that Kersey goes into that is plastered with other Cannon film posters. Work with what you got, right?

Anyway, back to the good stuff.

He is then tasked with getting into a fish cannery to find a drug smuggling operation. He makes sure to pack the right lunch for the job:

I am glad I packed a smaller gun. I need to save room for my dinner scoped rifle.

This part of the film is actually quite fun as it doesn't bother to explain how he keeps getting into these places or how he decides the best course of action. The movie doesn't care, and you shouldn't either. The goal of these acts of violence is to get the two biggest drug operations to turn on each other, with both thinking that the other is causing all of this damage to their own setups and men. And I will admit, I thought that this was actually kind of a clever idea. Well, clever is a relative term here when discussing the nuance (or lack thereof) in the Death Wish series so far. That there was supposed to be a bigger reason for the violence made me again think that this film was trying to go in a different direction. And nodding to the plot of A Fistful of Dollars doesn't hurt, either. 

There is a meeting of the two drug organizations, orchestrated by Kersey, that ends in chaos and violence. My favorite part is when a goon gets shot and is about to go head first into the glass of a car door, he has the good grace to lower his hands as not to cut them.

At least he hit the softest part of the car door.

Kersey eventually comes out of hiding to clean up the remaining trash and to let the remaining kingpin know why he is doing this. Kersey shows him a picture of Karen's daughter and he remarks that he doesn't even know who she is. Kersey comments that he does and then shoots the drug lord in the head.

Ah, my dinner gun!

Film over, right? Not so much. We now learn that Kersey has been being played by Mr. White, who actually isn't Mr. White, but a third drug kingpin that saw Kersey as weapon to aim at his competition and wipe them all out and give him control of Los Angeles.

Wow, I thought, Death Wish 4 is going to deal with the idea that Paul Kersey might have to accept that he has become the very thing he was fighting against. He is not a vigilante, but another hired gun killing people he doesn't know without any remorse. The earlier bit in the film when he had the dream about shooting himself  was hinting at this potential conflict and here it is right in front of him. Is he going to atone for what he did? Is he going to feel guilt?

Nah, Kersey does as he always does, and goes after the badder guy, regardless of the innocent lives of those around him that might be in harm's way. To be fair, Not Mr. White does kidnap Karen (hey, there she is again! Good job movie!) to draw Kersey out. White keeps Karen locked away in the most dangerous place on can think of: the roller rink.

I am the one who decides when its an All Skate or not. 

It is already a scary scenario, only made worse with the hindsight of the mass shootings that are happening in today's day and time, when people are firing guns in crowded areas. It gets ten times worse when they all have roller skates on. I am honestly surprised that the film didn't actually show collateral damage of people getting run over by roller skates. You sure as hell know Death Wish 3 is kicking itself for not doing it.

Kersey and White have a face to face showdown with Karen's life in the balance. She gets away from White only to be gunned down from behind. Karen exits the film with no real arc or any contribution other than being the mother of the girl who overdosed on drugs, loved a man double her age, and almost wrote a story about how drugs are bad. Sorry, Kay Lenz, I wish they would have given you more to do, but we know Cannon wasn't worried about women and their character development. Cannon wants tough guys being tough guys, exploding things. And that's exactly what we get:

'Wish... granted.' 

There was also another side story about a pair of cops trying to track down the identity of the vigilante and them figuring it out that is Kersey and then yet again letting him walk away when they see he was just trying to shoot the bad guys. There is no mention of his many crimes for being a paid hit-man for tow major drug organizations. Why would there be? Bad guy blow up! Time for the credits!

I am torn about this film because it kept bumping up against some really interesting ideas but would always turn back towards the tone deaf action and violence that the series had fallen into along the way. I believe had there been a just a little more self refection in this film, and having Karen actually do some journalism to try and expose those responsible for her daughter's death, Death Wish 4 could have had some legs that would make it a film honestly worthy of discussion.

It has been interesting to me so far while watching a lot Cannon films, how many of them almost stumble backwards into something more meaningful but then catch themselves at the last moment. I'm not saying Cannon could have righted their ship financially speaking with more thought put behind their action output, but it probably would have kept it from sinking as fast as it did. That and not overpaying yours stars. The budget for this film was 5 million and Bronson's salary was 4 million. That didn't help matters either.

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a better film than Death Wish 3. It is better made, makes more sense (again relative to the rest of the series), and tires to address some issues about drugs and responsibility. It isn't as much fun though. It didn't have to be as much fun if it was going to try and be a more grounded and serious film, but when you have wine bottle bombs and lunch box Uzis, you know it was trying to have it both ways and it ends up being neither.  

Parting Cannon Shots 

Is this better or worse than The Apple?

This is better than The Apple. I do wonder what a Death Wish film with musical numbers would look like though.

The Menahem Index: 

50% This veers off into the ridiculous but not as much as I would expect had this film been made by Menahem Golan.

Would I recomment this film to anyone? 

Yes, if you want to run the complete Death Wish series just to see if 4 was able to top 3. If someone had not seen a previous Death Wish film, this is not the one I would recommend to watch by itself.

If you want to watch the film, it is up in its entirety on Daily Motion, you can check it out here.