Tuesday, September 26, 2017

200 Items Or Less - Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

A few thoughts: While the first two in the series saw Paul Kersey take on individual thugs, and the third film had him taking on an entire residential block of criminals, it only made sense for the fourth to be the story of Kersey taking on and defeating drugs. Drug cartels, individual dealers, users, you name it. If drugs are near you, he's gonna shoot you. Pretty much a perfect example of the excess and violence found in Cannon films of the Golan-Globus era, there's really not much to say about this movie to set it apart from a good deal of the stuff they were producing at the time. Charles Bronson looks pretty tired of playing this role by this point, and with the series departing so heavily from its origins, there isn't much to say about the message or emotions of the story anymore. The third one, glorious as it may be, was the beginning of the end for this franchise. I enjoyed some of the corniness and the action is appropriately over-the-top, but the series was clearly stetched pretty thin by the time it came out. Still, solidly entertaining.


Who would I recommend it to? Only fans of the sequels of Death Wish should give this one a look. It's less fun than #3, but still pretty wild.

My grade: D+

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