DeathWish IV
The Crackdown
Fresh off his ghetto war in DeathWish III, Charles
Bronson, playing Paul Kersey, moves out to Los Angelos where he romantically
involved and living with a wonderful woman who has a teenage daughter Erika.
The two aren't married. L.A. is having a terrible drug problem at the time
and the police are losing the war. One evening when Kersey and his girlfriend
are spending the evening alone at home, her daughter and her Trans Am driving
boyfriend leave to go hang out at the arcade/skating rink/bumper cars place.
There, people are seen buying and selling drugs. Eventually, the boyfriend
offers the daughter some and she predictably overdoses on it. This leads
Kersey to have to get revenge on the dealer and so the pusher ends up frying
on the electrical panel above the bumper cars after a brief scuffle. Kersey's
still mad that those drug dealers did that to him, but he's done his revenge
so the movie is over right?--Wrong. Then he gets an anonymous phone call
from a gentleman who knows what happened. He insists he must meet with
Kersey at his own house or the police will be notified. When Kersey goes
to the mansion where this anonymous caller lives, he hears the story of
how drugs ruined his daughter and how much he despises what drugs have
done to the city and to his life. Armed with the leverage that comes with
knowing what Kersey's been up to, the man insists that Kersey start killing
one by one the drug lords of the city. He identifies the two main factions.
There is the Zacharias group led by Ed Zacharias and other one led by the
Ramirez brothers. Kersey will be supplied with weapons and money for this
task, but the philantropist is on a tight schedule so Bronson must get
to work immediately.
Kersey gets dressed up as a waiter at Ed Zacharias' lavish party. When
he's about to kill one of the lower lords, he hides in a bathroom just
as the Zacharias crew comes in and kills the intended target. They hear
Kersey in the bathroom and send one of them to have him killed. After desperately
pleeding, "I was just usin' the toilet", they go to a garage at the Zacharias
compound to kill Kersey, but Kersey overpowers the man then kills him.
He goes on about killing each one of them individually until many of the
high level people are dead. Eventually he's assigned to go undercover at
a production facility where they stuff raw fish with cocaine. Kersey poses
as an employee and scouts the place out. He sees where the cocaine is stored
and processed by several chemists. After wandering around he gets confronted
about being out of his designated area. Kersey claims he's new here and
doesn't know where the lunch room is. The supervisor doesn't buy it so
Kersey is forced to deal him a strong blow that buys time for an escape.
He then pulls out some sort of explosive and runs into the laboratory.
All the chemists know what's up and flee. He gets out and runs to a truck
right before it blows. He narrowly gets away from this one. The drug dealers
are understandably upset and suspect the other party of sabotage. At one
point, he's hiding in an apartment when a drug lord walk in. He's unarmed
but ends up killing him anyway by throwing him over the balcony onto a
limosine. The apartment is almost identical to the one in Kinjite
where Duke and his buddies hang out. Anyway, when this happens, a detective
for the police sees Kersey walk out of the building suspiciously into his
blue Oldsmobile which he drives to the scene of every crime he commits.
The detective recognizes the car from a previous incident and knows what's
up. Later the detective is seen talking to the drug lords about it and
thus he's working for them. The drug lords don't really believe this though
since all their people are dying too, so they suspect the opposing faction
of the crimes. The same is going on in the other camp as they plot ways
to get back at the other side. Kersey brilliantly decides to make his work
easier by getting everyone in one desolate place where they'll kill each
other and he can pick up any leftovers from their battle. He arranges a
meeting of the two factions atop a hill near L.A. They both drive limo's
up there and get in a shootout. Bronson kills a few from a distance and
everyone in both rings is gone. Kersey returns to the old man's house to
report the good news, but when he knocks on the front door, the servants
refuse to let him in. Kersey insists, "but I just talked to him last week."
The servant says, he's been on vacation for the last week. Kersey knows
what's up now and doesn't like it one bit. He rushes past the servant to
go to where the old man is. When the chair turns around, it's a different
person from before. And the plot thickens! Like any smart businessman,
the fiend who cheated Kersey tries to monopolize the market by setting
up his infastructure to replenish the drug needs of the city. As the only
supplier in town, he can make huge profits. Kersey now hunts down this
man to the arcade where his daughter was killed. Somehow the man has in
his clutches Kersey's girlfriend insisting he'll shoot her and they chase
through a skating rink shooting and striking fear into all the skaters.
They get to an isolated area and the man still insists, "I'll shoot her!"
This man is obviously not qualified to be in business because he knows
nothing about negotiating. The threat of killing the hostage is the only
power he has. Without the hostage, he's as good as dead. Nevertheless,
he shoots her in the head and tells Kersey, "I told you I'd do it!" hilariously
because it was almost as though he was blaming Kersey for her death. "I
told you I'd kill her." Of course Kersey kills him then and is even more
emotionally warped. Just the right background for DeathWish
V.
DeathWish I DeathWish II
DeathWish III DeathWish IV
DeathWish V
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