Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

Starring:Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, John P. Ryan, Perry Lopez, George Dickerson, Soon-Tek Oh, Dana Barron, Jesse Dabson, Peter Sherayko, James Purcell, Michael Russo, Danny Trejo, Daniel Sabia, Mike Moroff, Dan Ferro, Tom Everett, David Wolos-Fonteno, Michael Wise, Irwin Keyes, Tim Russ
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

excellent addition to the series
Deathwish Resurrected
Great Death Wish installment
Death Wish 4
Playing with our expectations in the cracktown

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
Starring: Charles Bronson , Kay Lenz , John P. Ryan , Perry Lopez , and George Dickerson
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000YEERG
Release Date: 2004-02-03

Description

The streets are filled with death and destruction. Ruthless drug traffickers prey upon the poor, the lonely, the helpless. L.A. is a city desperate for deliverance until now! Charles Bronson returns as Paul Kersey, the original urban vigilante and one-man demolition force in this pulse-pounding, take-no-prisoners thriller! Two rival drug gangs have a death-grip on L.A.'s battle-torn inner city. But their brutal reign of terror is about to come to a violent end. One man is out to avenge the cocaine-induced death of his girlfriend's teenage daughter. His name is Paul Kerseyand he's armed, dangerous and mad as hell!

Customer Reviews:

excellent addition to the series.......2007-03-09

The Death Wish series is an interesting collection of films, featuring revenge ("Death Wish 2", "Death Wish 5") and vigilante ("Death Wish", "Death Wish 3", "Death Wish 4") tales and starring Charles Bronson as "The Vigilante" Paul Kersey. The first three films in the series were surreal, hyped-out urban fever dreams with the first two being believable and serious (and with DW3 beginning seriously and slowly turning into an all-out cartoon culminating in an all-out street war with chainguns, rocket launchers, Home Alone-esque booby traps, and entire buildings exploding like a war zone). The first three films featured Bronson fighting various thugs, rapists, muggers, and "creeps". In "Death Wish 4", he abandons the street war and starts dismantling white collar criminal drug empires.

"Death Wish 4" takes a different direction than the first three by amping up the plot and easing back on the sleazy feel that permeated through the original Michael Winner-directed trilogy. Once again Bronson is propelled to vigilante action when a loved one dies, but this time the circumstances are different. Instead of a direct rape and/or murder, it's drugs that are the killer this time, so instead of attacking lowlifes, Bronson sets to work against the drug kingpins ruling the trade in LA as a favor to Nathan White (in a performance that goes from distinguished and calm in the beginning to hilariously over-the-top in the finale....those who have seen this know what I mean). It shouldn't be spoiling anything to say that, more or less, Bronson accomplishes his goal in no time at all, but to his chagrin White is more than what he seems.... The directing of J. Lee Thompson (Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear) gets the job done and the musical score is excellent (some have complained that the excellent Jimmy Page score featured in "Death Wish 2" and "Death Wish 3" is missing, but it seems fitting as Page's score had a more discordant and twisted feel that meshed well with the films' atmospheres, whereas almost all of that scummy atmosphere is gone in "Death Wish 4").

This is an excellent 80s actioner and a definate improvement over "Death Wish 3". Bronson does what he does best and John P. Ryan gives a hilarious and memorable performance ("I warned you.....I'd kill her!!). Fans of Bronson and these types of movies should be pleased.

Deathwish Resurrected.......2007-01-28

After the classic original Deathwish, numbers 2 & 3 may have supplied the violence, but lacked the heart that made Paul Kersey an interesting character. Unexpectedly, in #4, Bronson brings back the heart and soul of this remarkably unmarketed series (c'mon, where's the Vigilante action figure with assorted Punks and Gangsters?). This episode reminds us of the baggage Kersey carries and truly portrays him as a man who is unconcerned about his own survival unless it prevents him from fulfilling his mission of death without mercy. This is what sets the Bronson character apart from other great action heroes: he is never confused or hesitant in his killing. He is the Messenger of Bad Karma. His targets are already damned, he just stamps their ticket on the way to Hell.
Not only is this second only to the original in quality, but it does a nice nod to an excellent earlier film of Bronson, The Mechanic. His "hits" involve interesting technique showing us that Kersey is no amateur; he's really gotten damn good at what he does. The battle at the oilfield looks like lost footage of The Mechanic, and is surreal as Bronson slowly approaches his kill to the spooky metallic sounds of oilfield pumpjacks. The ending presents a terrible philosophic conclusion: Evil has been soundly thrashed, but the collateral damage goes on and the world seems no better. Obviously, Bronson's work is never done.

Great Death Wish installment.......2006-12-01

Once again, this is a major improvement from DW3. Bronson is as great as ever and I really loved his performance here. The plot is okay, not oscar material, but acceptable. At least it has more to it than just shooting people.

Very good movie for Bronson fans.

Death Wish 4 .......2006-11-10

I would highly recommend this seller. The order was filled in an accurate and prompt manner.

Playing with our expectations in the cracktown.......2006-08-31

The Death Wish films strongly follow a formula that was set by the first film: Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), an easygoing architect either in New York City or Los Angeles, at some point with a female significant other and usually some kind of daughter figure, experiences violence towards his loved ones by anarchic gangs. The violence often involves rapes, severe beatings and murders. Fed up, especially since law enforcement can't take care of the problem very efficiently, he goes into a vigilante mode and starts racking up dead punks. He takes on an alternate identity and utilizes impressive armories, all while remaining suave and easygoing. Meanwhile, law enforcement tends to play under-the-table games with him, since the public tends to be sympathetic with vigilantes taking scum off the streets and the police realize that the vigilante can circumvent the system and do the job with no bureaucratic hassles.

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is no exception to using this formula. But new writer Gail Morgan Hickman and new director J. Lee Thompson use the formula in a very creative way for fans of the series--they let it ride along implicitly and then play with our expectations based on it. (By the way, Thompson was new to the Death Wish series, but he had directed Bronson six times previously, beginning with St. Ives (1976), then in The White Buffalo (1977), Caboblanco (1980), 10 to Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), and Murphy's Law (1986). They later went on to work together in Messenger of Death (1988) and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989).)

So we begin with a typical Death Wish scene--an attractive woman ambushed in a lonely parking garage by three thugs and raped, only to be interrupted by Kersey bearing high velocity leaden gifts. But it turns out to be an opening out of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) instead, as Kersey was simply dreaming. Awake, he gets on with his architectural life. We see him with a serious girlfriend who has a daughter, and we figure it spells trouble for their wellbeing. It does, but the trouble begins abruptly, in an unexpected way.

And then, after briefly flirting with the usual Death Wish route of Kersey hitting the streets and seeing what the punks look like for himself so he can mop up the gutters with them, Hickman and Thompson make a left turn, and Death Wish 4 has Kersey functioning something like a mob hitman instead. He has a mysterious benefactor feeding him with information on crime bigwigs instead of piddly gang members, and in an echo of Death Wish 3, he effectively enters a guerrilla war with them, only this time Kersey has no help; he's a one-man army. Thompson continues to play with our expectations in many ways, including a fairly shocking occurrence near the end of the film (after a very fun scene in a roller disco).

In addition to the clever meta-level stuff, the set-up of the film results in it basically being a series of action vigilante/hitman set pieces. There are still a number of stories threaded throughout to provide unity, but the set pieces have all of the creativity, uniqueness and thrill of going through the various levels of a great contemporary video game. It wouldn't be surprising if Death Wish 4 were one of the inspirations for a modern game or two (even though the film isn't exactly kind to video games--again, see the roller disco scene).

On the forest level, Death With 4 certainly isn't unpredictable, although on the trees level it very often is. But that's not needed in a Death Wish film, anyway. The basic requirement is for Bronson to be able to kick butt in entertaining and suspenseful ways, and Thompson gives you as much or more bang for your buck on that end as any other film in the series.

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