Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)
Charles Bronson joins the Reagan-era “war on drugs” in the fourth instalment of the Death Wish series, which in terms of plot comes off like an extremely violent after-school special. There’s not much new here, though the filmmakers deserve credit for trying to shake up the formula. Directed by J. Lee Thompson and written by Gail Morgan Hickman, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown isn’t particularly memorable, but still offers plenty of dumb fun. Bronson fans will be solidly entertained.
If anyone is exhibiting a “death wish” at this point in the series, it’s characters foolish enough to become close to Bronson’s Paul Kersey. To be a friend, family member, or romantic partner of this man means setting yourself up to be murdered as a reason for Bronson to kill. As Death Wish 4 starts, Paul is once again living in Los Angeles and working as an architect, having conveniently avoided any repercussions for killing hundreds of people in the last film.
Once again, Paul is dating a woman around three decades younger than him, newspaper reporter Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). When Karen’s teenage daughter Erica (Dana Barron) dies of a cocaine overdose, Paul accepts the offer of tabloid publisher Nathan White (John P. Ryan) to go after two rival gangs that dominate the L.A. drug trade, providing him with whatever money and weapons he needs. As Paul slaughters his way through the ranks of the gangs, he begins to suspect his benefactor has not been totally honest with him.
The opening scene of Death Wish 4 is more strange and unsettling than almost anything we’ve seen in the series, showing off the deft directorial hand of Thompson, who replaces longtime Bronson collaborator Michael Winner. A blonde, blue-eyed woman alone in a parking garage — I only mention her appearance because it’s a recurring trope in these films, drawing upon Western cultural views that equate blonde hair with purity and innocence — is attacked in her car by masked hoodlums. They assault and prepare to rape her when who should show up but Paul Kersey, clad in black. “Who the fuck are you?” a rapist demands, to which Paul responds, “Death” and blows the creep away. When he kills the last of them, he turns over the body and is startled to see his own face.
Of course, this proves to be just a dream sequence and marks pretty much the last instance of any reflection on Paul’s part. Thankfully, the filmmakers don’t spend too much time on Paul’s new family life, because we all know what’s going to happen to Karen and Erica. Paul seals the fate of the latter when he proclaims that Erica is just like a daughter to him.
Death Wish 4 might be the most conservative of the series in how thickly it lays on the anti-drug message along with the usual glorification of vigilantism. At times it’s reminiscent of the cult classic anti-pot propaganda film Reefer Madness. Take the scene when Erica goes out on a date with her boyfriend Randy (Jesse Dabson) and Paul looks out the window to see them smoking a joint in Randy’s car. As in Reefer Madness, just one puff of the magic dragon is enough to set these wholesome youth on a path to self-destruction and violence, starting with Erica buying the crack that leads to her fatal overdose.
There are lots of unintentionally funny lines about the threat of drugs to children, again delivered in the manner of an after-school special. When Karen blames herself for Erica’s death, Paul tells her, “It’s not your fault. It’s those damn drugs!” When White tries to enlist Paul for his crusade against the drug gangs, he asks him, “How many children do we let them destroy before we say enough, Mr. Kersey?” All that’s missing is Helen Lovejoy asking won’t somebody please think of the children.
Widespread drug addiction tends to reflect deeper structural problems in society. Conditions like poverty, homelessness, unemployment, trauma, and mental health issues exacerbate drug addictions. Ultimately, drug addiction is a public health problem and must be treated as such. But the right-wing “war-on-drugs” approach views it as a purely criminal matter. A character in Death Wish 4 literally says anyone involved in the drug trade deserves to die.
It’s reminiscent of the views of Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines, who executed thousands of drug addicts and encouraged the population to kill drug dealers and users. Paul Kersey “solves” the drug problem in L.A. by massacring dealers and gangsters and blowing up their facilities. It’s a ridiculous fantasy that’s fine as mindless entertainment, but not so much as serious public health policy (take note, Pierre Poilievre).
Aside from the odd corrupt cop, the villains in Death Wish 4 are standard ’80s drug dealers who wouldn’t be out of place in Scarface. Still, they make for a nice contrast to the youthful punks who served as antagonists in the prior films. The scenes when Bronson goes after them are funny in that it’s now standard for him to infiltrate their premises in disguise, as when he gets into a drug dealer’s mansion by pretending to be a bartender. He poses as a wine retailer to enter a bar and blows up a few gangsters with a bomb disguised as a wine bottle. The scene where the bomb detonates and the actors turn into obviously fake dummies is amusing in its cheapness, reflecting the lower budget of these films after Death Wish 3.
Thompson builds some decent tension during a scene in which Paul breaks into a gangster’s apartment to wiretap it, when the guy unexpectedly returns home early. A twist in the final act involving the main villain’s identity will be predictable for some, but I was fine with it because the actor is clearly having a good time chewing the scenery. The body count in Death Wish 4 is lower than its predecessor, but that was a hard act to follow — and in any case, shots of Bronson mowing down endless waves of punks can get a little monotonous after a while.
There’s a climactic shootout at a roller skate rink which, seen from the 2020s, feels uncomfortably like a harbinger of the mass shootings that would come to plague society, often at the hands of far-right extremists — not least because Bronson is now bristling with deadlier weaponry than the humble pistol he started the series with. For a film easily dismissed as mindless action, it’s a disturbing reminder of the violent society we live in. While mass shootings of course have deeper social causes, one wonders about the role of movies like Death Wish in solidifying the mentality that the best way to solve your problems is to kill as many people as possible.
The fate of one of Paul’s loved ones at the end of the film feels both predictable and unnecessary. It really hammers home the point that the only role of these supporting characters, almost always women, is to provide motivation for Bronson to kill. Every film feels the need to reset Paul’s personal life so he has a clean slate in the next film. The death of the main villain is still hilariously cartoonish though. We’re in Looney Tunes territory at this point.
It’s amazing how abruptly these movies end after Bronson is done killing. As usual, as soon as Paul dispatches the main villain, he has maybe a line or two of dialogue with a cop who — hardly a spoiler for anyone this far into the series — lets him go because they sympathize with his vigilantism. To continue with the Looney Tunes comparisons, these movies might as well finish with Bronson saying in Porky Pig style, “Everyone’s dead! That’s all, folks!”
Anyway, people who watch Death Wish sequels know what they’re getting and that’s what they get here. Extra kudos for the drug-related pun in the title.
6/10
