Death Wish 4 was the natural continuation of Charles Bronson’s vigilante film series and 
by this time the storyline, which was never a fantastic piece of narrative in the first place, was starting to become a little tired; or perhaps a tad predictable. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown was the first of the series to feature a subtitle.
It’s 1987 and our hero Paul Kersey is now living back in Los Angeles and once again an incident which affects him personally is the catalyst which starts the orgy of revenge. Paul’s girlfriend is Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz) and Karen’s daughter is Erica (Dana Barron) who that evening heads out on a date with her boyfriend which concludes with her dying of an overdose after being given crack by ‘Jojo’. Erica’s boyfriend Randy threatens to go to the police but Jojo kills him to stop this.
Kersey witnesses this killing ad subsequently dispatches Jojo. A wealthy local publisher, Nathan White (John P. Ryan) gets wind of the killing and offers Kersey everything he needs to rid Los Angeles of it’s two biggest drug dealers. We also learn that Nathan’s daughter previously died of a drugs overdose.
Now the fun begins as Kersey starts to investigate and track down the two drug lords, Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez) and Jack Romero (Mike Moroff). The first big action set piece takes place in Zacharias’ mansion but subsequent shootouts occur in an Italian restaurant and a video store. The two rival drug dealers begin to suspect each other for obvious reasons and meet at some oil fields to talk about the events. Kersey gets there before them and as he begins shooting, Zacharias and Moroff turn on each other, both ending up dead.
Now we learn that Nathan White is not who he appears to be and has used Kersey to wipe out the criminals. He had planned to kill Kersey also and takes Karen hostage. In the final scenes, Kersey pursues ‘White’ and eventually kills him with a grenade launcher. Karen is unfortunately killed in the process.