Paul Kersey once again played by Charles Bronson returns as the Vigilante. The film starts off in a parking garage when we see a young woman walk towards her car. She looks around and three thugs appear, she gets into the car only to be pulled out. The three thugs start to rape her when Kersey appears and shoots and kills two of the thugs. He then shoots the third and wounds him, the thug tries to get to the exit but Kersey puts down the shutters. He shoots the thug dead and rolls over the body to reveal the face is his own, he wakes up. It turns out to be one of Paul's bad dreams.
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| The Face of Death |
Paul while at his office has a chat with Erica played by Dana Barron. She is the daughter of the woman Paul is seeing. Erica later goes to an arcade with her boyfriend and they end up buying crack cocaine, she takes the drugs and later dies of an overdose. Paul is now certain that Erica's boyfriend is involved with the drug overdose. Erica's boyfriend confronts the drug dealer and says he will call the police, the drug dealer then kills him. Kersey is witness to this and shoots the drug dealer, the dealers body hits a electrified roof and explodes.
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| A young life lost... |
When Paul arrives home he receives a phone call from a publisher Nathan White played by John P. Ryan. He explains that his wife died and he only has his daughter left. He then tells Kersey she later died because of a drug overdose. Nathan wants Kersey to take out the two major drug gangs of L.A., Kersey accepts and Nathan supplies Paul with the weapons he needs and all the information required to get them.
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| In need of Vigilante help... |
Kersey goes undercover and goes to the first drug dealers mansion where he begins to bug the phones. He then hides in the closet and witnesses the drug lord kill someone. The drug lord notices Paul and orders him to carry out the body and put it in the trunk. A hitman helps him, but just before the hitman goes to kill Paul he slams the trunk down on his head and kills him. Paul then follows more of the drug lords men into a restaurant and gives them a bottle of wine containing a bomb, the bomb explodes and kills everyone in the restaurant.
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| Here is your wine, punks... |
Kersey then goes into a video store which is actually a drug factory and kills all of the drug lord's men and the drug lord that was part of the second gang. Paul then gets the two gangs together for a deal while he overlooks the whole deal with a sniper rifle. Paul shoots and both gangs start to kill each other, Paul then finishes off the remaining drug lord. When Paul returns to Nathan he is congratulated but when Kersey leaves to get into the car he notices it is rigged with a car bomb. Kersey jumps out and it explodes, Kersey later realizes that Nathan is the last drug lord in L.A and he killed the other gangs so he would have more business.
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| A Vigilante ambush. |
Nathan finds out that Paul did not die in the car bomb and takes Karen (Paul's girlfriend) hostage. Paul returns to his apartment and grabs his weapons and goes to the meeting place. Paul arrives at the meeting place at the underground car park, Paul rigs his car with a brick to accelerate forward and Nathan's men shoot at the car. Paul then comes out of cover and throws a grenade into goons and kills them. Nathan runs away with Karen into the ice rink where Paul kills more henchmen. Karen tries to escape from Nathan but he shoots her dead, Paul sees the body and is distraught at what he has seen. He realizes Nathan has run out of Ammo and fires the grenade launcher directly into him and blows him up.
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| Bang goes the dummy! |
A police officer arrives and let's Paul go and yet again Paul is left with nothing and walks away form the scene of the crime.
Extras;
Only a trailer.
1/5
Picture Quality;
Like Death Wish 2 and 3 MGM have done another great job of releasing on Blu-ray. Grain is intact and present throughout the film, colours and perfectly balanced and no Digital noise reduction has been applied.
4/5
Audio Quality;
The lossless Mono track serves well, dialogue is clear and is never muffled. The soundtrack is clear and never overpowering.
4/5
While this entry marks a departure of Michael Winner as director, it is fun to watch and is not as insanely silly as Death Wish 3. It can have some goofy moments like when Paul goes undercover or when he blows up the main villain with a grenade launcher revealing a dummy, but overall it is a marked improvement over Death Wish 3 and the series feels more grounded.
Recommended to fans only.
Andrew
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