Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

Paul Kersey, the architect turned vigilante, has settled into life with his girlfriend Karen Sheldon, a journalist with a teenage daughter. When the girl dies after taking drugs supplied by a local dealer, Kersey avenges her and then sets out to bring down the drug trade in Los Angeles. A wealthy man who has suffered a similar loss contacts him and offers money, weapons and information, allowing Kersey to turn the city's two main drug gangs against each other.

Released in 1987, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is the fourth entry in the series and was directed by J. Lee Thompson, the twentieth of the twenty-one films he directed in chronological order, arriving between Murphy's Law and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. Charles Bronson returns as Paul Kersey, with Kay Lenz as Karen, John P. Ryan as Nathan White, Perry Lopez as Ed Zacharias, and George Dickerson and Soon-Tek Oh as police officers. Gail Morgan Hickman wrote the screenplay, Pancho Kohner produced, and the film was made by Cannon Group and Golan-Globus Productions.

The production had a budget of five million dollars and took about seven million worldwide, a modest return. Audiences rate it 5.5 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly twelve thousand votes and 5.7 out of 10 on TMDB from a few hundred. A critics' score of 4.9 out of 10 comes from eight reviews, leaving the film rated somewhat below its audience scores.