Some spoilers here ********************************************In this forth installment of the "Death Wish" movies Paul Kersey not only takes out the local street hoods but has him using and manipulating the top organize crime gangs, that are dealing in illegal narcotics in L.A. Kersey get them kill each other off
without them ever knowing about it! This whole plan was hatched by very wealthy businessman and "distraught father" Nathen White, John P. Ryan.
Seeing that he and Kersey both have something in common, their daughter were crime victims, White supplies Kersey with information and guns and explosives to do in both L.A drug gangs, the Zacharias & Romano, and thus stop the flow on the streets of dangerous and illegal drugs. Kersey reluctantly goes along with White's plan; he already did in the sleaze ball drug dealer JoJo (Hector Mercado) who was responsible for his girlfriend's daughters death.
Coming up with a proposal, as well as threatening to go to the police and exposing him, White has Kersey take the bait and methodically wipes out, with their help, the Zacharias and Romono gangs. Paul does it his usual way by blasting shooting and it one case dropping one of Zacharias' men off the balcony of a high-rise building where he landed on the hood his waiting limousine.
Kersey to his surprise later finds out that he was actually working for another mob drug kingpin, White the so-called distraught dad! Kersey was doing his dirty work by taking out his, White's, competition. Kersey also does a little cleaning up of the corrupt LAPD by blasting dirty cop Let. Nozaki, (Soon-Tek Oh), who found out who he really was and keeping it quite until he, Let. Nozaki, did the job himself in killing Kersey, them breaking the good news to his boss, not the LA Chief of Police, drug kingpin Eddie Zacharias.
After what looked like the "Battle of the Mobsters" the Zacharias and Romono mobs were wiped out in a free-fire fight outside L.A at a deserted oil field. We're treated then to still another bloody shoot-out between vigilante Paul Kersey and the surviving Nathen White Mob, in and out of a local skating rink. In that shootout Kersey's girlfriend newspaper reporter Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz), gets shot to pieces by White who then Kersey blasted clean out of existence with his M-90 machine gun/rocket launcher.
After offing JoJo at the start of the film "Death Wish 4" it seemed that Paul Kersey was ready to go back to his peaceful and serene life as an architect and living with Karen, after burying and mourning her daughter Erica. It''s then that Paul was recruited by a higher power to do, like the saying goes, what's a dirty job but somebody has to do it and nobody is better at doing it than Charles Bronson/Paul Kersey.
This film is a step up from the last film. While not great it does have a couple of good plot twists and some soild acting. Its worth checking out for fans of the series.
July 3, 2007
