After a first instalment that raised some pertinent questions about the law and justice (albeit in a very exploitative way) and a third instalment that instead said “fuck all that” and hurtled toward good/bad movie Valhalla with all guns blazing, it was inevitable that architect turned vigilante, Paul Kersey had finally shot his bolt. With the leap from morality questioning thriller to gonzo, imbecilic action movie now utterly complete, the fourth Death Wish limped into theaters in 1987 to try and desperately show that ol’ Charles Bronson still had what it takes to lay down some old school pain on all the drug fiends and sex weirdos out on the streets.
However, even at the age of 65, it turned out that while Bronson was noticably slowing down, the script he had to work with had even less energy than he did thanks to the crumbling infrastructure of Cannon Films who was finding that the world was moving on from their simplistic, childish brand of cinematic bloodshed.
Despite having killed more men than testicular cancer, Paul Kersey has managed to settle down yet again after a few short years since his last New York rampage. Now quietly residing once again in L.A., Paul’s now dating plucky reporter Karen Sheldon and has even set ip his own architect firm and the only sounds of gunfire and screams he hears are in the reoccurring nightmares he has from his bad old days. However, to date Paul Kersey is to slow dance with death, and sure enough, before you can even say “plot point”, Karen’s equally plucky daughter Erica is plucked right off the tree when she overdoses on crack cocaine and flatlines at the nearest hospital.
While a distraught Karen wants to shed light on America’s drug problem, Kersey reckons that it’s murderin’ time and heads out onto the streets in order to erase the goon who sold her the drugs in the first place. However, after leaving him lightly sauteed atop the electrified ceiling grill of a fairground ride, Kersey is contacted in secret by reclusive tabloid publisher Nathan White who offers him a curious proposition. It seems that White is also sick of the drug trade that’s sweeping across America and while Nancy Reagan suggested that the youth “Just say no”, Kersey’s mysterious benefactor would rather someone just kills drug dealers and be done with it.
Ever the righteous sociopath, Kersey agrees, but instead of targeting the lowlifes and bottom feeders who sell their lethal wares to younglings, he takes aim at the two biggest crime families in the state, the one owned by Ed Zacharias – a man so nuts he eats a lit candle off his birthday cake – and the one owned by the fiery Romero Brothers. The only catch is that both gangs are currently respecting a truce, so Kersey starts chipping away at both sides in order to kick start a gang war, but Kersey might want to take a closer look at his secretive sponsor as not everything is as it seems.
When it came to tackling America’s much touted war on drugs, it came as no surprise that the Cannon Group would tackle it with all the subtlety of key-hole surgery performed with a rusty Stanley knife, but what’s truly ironic is that such an anti-drug actioner could come complete with a script that read as if it was written by someone higher than Everest. For a start, no one in the film seems to be able to agree on whether Kersey is suffering from some sort of PTSD or not, as the movie starts with a dream sequence that heavily implies either extreme guilt or noticable trauma is floating around inside Kersey’s brainpan. However, the second poor little Erica is bring fitted for a toe-tag, off he charges into the fray once more and by the time Nathan White offers to bankroll another yet Paul Kersey massarce, this supposedly shaken man still has a sizable armory hidden in a fake wall in his apartment and positively jumps at the chance to yeet some scumbags into the afterlife.
From here on in it’s fairly standard action/thriller stuff as Paul stakes out both families by “blending in” as a 61 year-old bartender or a random travelling wine salesman in order to plant dissent or actual bombs, depending on what the situation requires.
The problem is that even though Death Wish 4 is directed by J. Lee Thompson who had helmed many previous Charles Bronson potboilers, there’s a very real feeling that everyone here is just simply going through the motions. I’d never thought I’d say this, but the film made me miss the more trashy/flashy drive of a Michael Winner installment that may admittedly have frequently leant on the lowest-common-denominator button one too many times, but it certainly wasn’t dull.
Still, there’s still a slight sense of the old thrills as Bronson goes to work and it’s still fun to spot hopping supporting actors like Danny Trejo, X-Files’ Mitch Pleggi and the dude who played the Vulcan in Star Trek: Voyger pop up in early, villainous roles.
However, due to the insane amount of plot armour that swaddled around Kersey like a baby blanket, the movie asks you to accept some pretty ridiculous things in order for it to even remotely work. Firstly, I fully recognise that Bruce Wayne can manage to run an entire company while simultaneously beating seven shades if shit out of the criminally insane, but Kersey’s no goddamn Batman, so the fact that he’s able to plot and execute the demise of two major crime families without taking so much as a single half-day off from his firm is asking a little much. Plus, the movie is so punch drunk with the thought of Kersey being a selfless, the film constantly ignores the fact that he’s blatantly careless as fuck, starting gunfights in places utterly crammed with civilians (the final showdown is a blazing gunfight in a fucking roller rink) and getting easily hoodwinked by a third crime boss who has been posing as Nathan White (a scenery chewing John P. Ryan) in order to knock off the competition.
Most of all, while the Death Wish movies have become experts at “fridging” Kersey’s various loved ones in order to kick start the plot, the treatment of Kay Lenz’s girlfriend character is just fucking bizarro. While we’re gratefully spared any rape scenes this time around, Karen is still kidnapped during the final reel, but while trying to escape “White’s” clutches she fatally machine-gunned in the back while fleeing and killed presumably for no other reason than to justify Kersey spectacularly shooting his newest nemesis with the grenade launcher mounted on his M16. It’s a weirdly callous move, even for a Death Wish movie, and you wonder if it was some half-assed attempt to show that being a vigilante doesn’t pay – but if that’s true, then why isn’t Kersey in jail?
Bad movie enthusiasts will hoover up the cinematic stupidity like the coke fiends the movie frequently slaughters, but this fourth entry lacks the gonzo insanity of Death Wish 3 to take the edge off its wilful idiocy.
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