16. Naturally, the next scene finds Kersey arriving at a very nice mansion. He meets his caller, who introduces himself as Nathan White. White refers to Kersey as "Mr. Vigilante". Yes, that is the media's nickname for Kersey, which proves that most truly creative writers don't end up working at newspapers.

"Chuck, our careers have really hit the skids. Haven't they?"

17. White is played by veteran character actor John P. Ryan. Other films he's been in have ranged from pretty darn good (Runaway Train) to cheesy (Larry Cohen's It's Alive) to... Well, we'll get to Delta Force 2 eventually. Here, he appears to have done the same preparation for his role as Anthony Zerbe did for his Star Trek: Insurrection performance, because both guys affect an odd speaking cadence that sounds like it should be British, but misses the mark.

18. White slowly exposits that he wants Kersey to kill someone, relating how his daughter died of a drug overdose, just like Erica. He offers Kersey anything he needs to take out the drug dealers, explaining that he's done a fair bit of research on them. And yes, this was made during the Reagan-era war on drugs, so there's plenty of heavy-handed stuff, including this howler of a line from White.

Gotta love that '80s reactionary stuff. As we'll see later, this also counts as ironic foreshadowing.

19. We also learn that White owns a newspaper. I think the film wants us to think it's the same one Karen works for, but no one ever comes out and says it, and at the end of the day it doesn't matter in the slightest.

20. It's interesting to note how the target of each Death Wish film changes with the prevailing societal fear of the time. While the first three films were extremely paranoid about street crime and gang activity, here we get a social issue that's a lot closer to reality. Sadly, this takes away some of the cheesy fun of the series.

21. Kersey asks for a few days to think about it, and we next see him with Karen either going to or coming from Erica's funeral. It doesn't matter which, since Karen will only appear in about three more scenes after this. Long story short, Karen blames herself for Erica, Kersey reassures her it was the drugs, and Karen decides to write a story on it.

22. Karen talks her editor into it, and then there's a scene at the morgue where she looks at dead bodies in drug related cases. And then there's a scene at the pier where she talks to a drug dealer played by Tim "Tuvok" Russ. And that's about it for Karen until the last ten minutes or so. And this four-minute hunk represents the entire breadth of the film's interest in drugs as a social problem, but that's about what I've come to expect from Cannon films.

23. In fact, we cut directly from the conversation on the pier (almost mid-sentence, actually) to White and Kersey talking back at the mansion. No surprise, Kersey has accepted the job, and from here on in it's the Charles Bronson Show. Kersey is put on the trail of two rival drug gangs, led by the Romero brothers and Ed Zacharias, respectively. It's explained that the two gangs have a tense truce at the moment, but I'm sure this will change very quickly.

24. Next comes a scene where cops Nozaki and Reiner connect Kersey to a mugger who was killed two years previously. Reiner says that "The Vigilante" (God help me, but that's even worse than Mr. Vigilante) retired years ago. Nozaki finds evidence relating to Kersey's car, and our less than dynamic duo heads to Kersey's office. The ensuing visit sees Kersey being rather terse, which only makes Reiner and Nozaki more suspicious.

25. Later that night, Kersey is looking over photos of Zacharias and his gang, while White monotonously exposits about them. This will be a frequent occurence, so in the interest of brevity, let's just say that John Ryan does an excellent job of making the viewer believe that he truly does not give a shit about this movie.

26. Cut to Zacharias's house, where he's surrounded by scantily clad women. Zacharias is played by Perry Lopez, whose most notable role was in Chinatown. It turns out to be a birthday celebration, and Zacharias is presented with a cake with a half-naked woman on it. Sadly, this is the only nudity we get in the movie. Well, at least it makes the bad guy come off as appropriately sleazy.

Auditions for Over 40 Jackass were met with less than glowing enthusiasm.

27. After blowing out all but one of the candles, Zacharias takes the lone candle and puts it out by sticking it in his mouth... and eating it. Which makes him come off as a sleazy guy who possibly was the kid in school who loved paste.

28. Later, we see that Kersey has infiltrated the party, posing as a bartender. We're also introduced to the Romeros. Not much to say about them, really. One's a little more of a hothead than the other. At this point, I'm just trying to fill up enough space to make this a proper paragraph.

29. As Kersey sneaks around, Zacharias gets a phone call that makes him rather upset. He tells a goon to bring somebody to the game room, where just by sheer coincidence Kersey is installing a bug in the phone. Don't ask me where an architect learns how to tap a phone.

30. Kersey continues to bug the place as Zacharias and the Romeros enter the game room. Kersey hides in the bathroom as the bad guys enter. Evidently, the call Zacharias got concerns the pusher Kersey killed earlier. Zacharias asks the Romeros if they were involved, which they emphatically deny, wanting to keep the peace. Some guy named Vincent is brought in, and Kersey watches as Zacharias kills him for taking samples from drug shipments.

31. Kersey closes the bathroom door, and the noise gets the attention of Zacharias and company. See, this is why you don't get a vigilante to play spy. Kersey introduces himself as "Leo" and tries to keep up his bartender disguise. He's told to keep quiet, and help another guy move the body. The goon moving the body is given a sign from Zacharias while Kersey isn't looking. Unfortunately, the dude bugs his eyes two inches out of his head as a sign of affirmation.

"What do you mean I look suspicious?"

32. Kersey notices this, of course, and after disposing of the body in a trunk, he slams the trunk lid down on the goon's neck, hits him with a tire iron, and casually escapes.

33. Next, we get more of the dull, monotonous tones of John Ryan as Kersey is put on the trail of three more Zacharias guys, one of whom is played by Danny Trejo, last seen around here getting knocked around by Steven Seagal.

34. Trejo and the others head to an Italian restaurant for lunch, while Kersey watches from his car across the street. He opens a briefcase containing several fake wine bottles. I wonder where this could be heading.

35. Kersey enters the restaurant posing as a wine seller, and he goes to the table of goons and sets the bottle down. Danny Trejo grabs Kersey and asks if he knows him from somewhere. Kersey gets out of this by tossing Trejo's drink on him, and making a run for it.

36. As he exits, we cut back to the goons, who have been replaced by three of the cheapest and most obvious dummies money can buy, just as the place goes up in a cheesy explosion. Seriously, this is so hilariously bad it borders on genius.

See for yourself.

37. Later, Kersey listens on the bug as Zacharias fumes over the explosion, ruling out the Romeros. This would be a lot more entertaining if it weren't all so damned perfunctory. Still, the film has just enough cheese to get by.

38. Kersey is back in his office, so we're in for more droning from John Ryan. God, the voiceover work here just drains all the energy out of the movie. It's weird, because Ryan is perfectly animated and into it in Runaway Train, Avenging Force (a Michael Dudikoff film sadly unavailable in the US) and shockingly enough, Delta Force 2, for crying out loud! Either way, Kersey is led to one of the Romero guys next, a sleazebag named Max who uses a video store as a front. In a little inside joke, his store has a display for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which Cannon released in 1986.

39. Kersey gets into the place with ease (it's a video store, not Fort Knox. What did you expect?). His weapon of choice is a small Uzi with a silencer attached. Kersey sneaks into Max's office, which is covered in movie posters. The Cannon productions I can recognize are Treasure of the Four Crowns, and I think a poster for Breakin' under its alternate title Breakdance: The Movie. Looking over my sources, it appears that all the posters are of Cannon pictures, which shows that not only is this guy an evil person, but he also has really shitty taste in films.

Looks like Golan and Globus forgot to send a check... again.

40. Matters of taste aside, Kersey surprises Max, talks a bit, and then kills him and two other guys before escaping. It's nowhere near as exciting as it sounds, and the only thing worth remembering about this scene are the posters.

41. For the record, the posters are as follows: Treasure of the Four Crowns, Breakdance, Camorra (an import featuring Harvey Keitel), The Naked Face (starring Roger Moore), Field of Honor (a Korean War drama starring Everett McGill), America 3000 (a really bad post apocalyptic flick), The Story of O Part II (looks like a soft core sex film), Salome (based on a play by Oscar Wilde), Grace Quigley (starring Nick Nolte and Katherine Hepburn), Thunder Alley (a rock and roll drama with a title better suited for a '70s car chase film), Thunder Run (a 1985 action flick starring Forrest Tucker), The Ambassador (a Robert Mitchum thriller based on Elmore Leonard's 52 Pickup, which Cannon would make a second time with the original title and Roy Scheider) and some others that are too obscured for me to make out.

42. Also worthy of mentioning is that in the action scenes, the music is recycled from Missing in Action and Invasion U.S.A. Okay, it's really not that worthy of mentioning. It's just cheap.