Jack Elgin (Irons) is a hardworking magazine editor. He loves his wife, son, and daughter, and he decides to combine work with a family vacation when they all fly to India. Unfortunately, terrorists hijack the plane and kill a lot of people along the way - including two members of the Elgin family. Suddenly, the genteel Elgin becomes irritated and aggressive, and has revenge on his mind. After, typically, trying all the traditional channels to get justice, he realizes the only true justice will come by his own hand. Along his road to revenge he meets CIA agent Davidson (Priestley), FBI agent Bernard (Whitaker), and reconnects with old contacts such as a woman named Kate (Rampling). Will our unorthodox hero iron out the bad guys once and for all...or will he find out he has too many IRONS in the fire? Find out today...Before Taken (2008), Before Harry Brown (2009), before The Gunman (2015), and before the trend of what Hollywood snidely dubbed "GeriAction", we had The Fourth Angel. If a bunch of high-class British people made a Death Wish sequel in their own milieu, and instead of Charles Bronson got Jeremy Irons, The Fourth Angel would be the likely result. There's something awesome about Jeremy Irons one minute wearing white pants and a polo sweater or off pheasant hunting, and the next minute he's wearing the time-honored Revenge Jacket, speeding down the street on a motorcycle, smoking a cigarette and blowing away the bad guys with an arsenal of guns and grenades.Director John Irvin, who has had a long and distinguished career but would be known to us and fans of the site as the director of the classic Arnie vehicle Raw Deal (1986) - no one gives Schwarzenegger a Raw Deal, just in case you forgot - and Dot.Kill (2005), does more than a solid job; he is in control of the proceedings and directs with style, excitement, and fluidity. The Fourth Angel rarely gets boring, and you really care about Jack and his son. You truly want Jack to blow the baddies to kingdom come, but with style, aplomb, and some classic British restraint.The movie delivers the goods on a lot of levels, and is a satisfying watch. Irons is backed up well by his co-stars: Rampling has a small role but always adds something to whatever she's in, Forest Whitaker we all know has charisma and commitment, and Jason Priestley is too old to be a teenager, but too young to be a CIA agent. He's caught in the middle, age-wise, but we're glad he's here. We guessed the filmmakers thought Luke Perry would be too much of a Himbo to take on the role. So naturally they got Priestley instead.The Fourth Angel is certainly what you would call a classy revenge film, which shows that our favorite subgenre has many flavors and varieties. Just when you think you've seen 'em all, along comes Jeremy Irons to show terrorists the true meaning of "Class Warfare"! We give a hearty recommendation to this fine film.

Quote from the Bible, in Revelations 16:8 : "And the Fourth Angel poured out his vial upon the sun: and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire." On a holiday flight to India, the family of magazine editor Jack Elgin (Jeremy Irons) are involved in a hijack and killed. When the hijackers are released on a technicality, Jack goes on a one-man mission to kill the terrorists after the governmental powers that be let them go. He uses his resources at work to track them down and eliminate them on his own, bringing him to the attention of US agent, Agent Jules Bernard (Forest Whitaker).Forest Whitaker makes the most of an underwritten part and when he and Irons come face to face in the climactic scenes they become a duo of powerful screen presences. The acting could have been better, the direction is sloppy, the screenplay is probably something out of a badly written dime story novel, and the whole premise remarkable in that it expects us to accept this magazine editor as a guy who could somehow defeat masses of heavily armed murderers on his own. A (generous) 6/10

"The Fourth Angel" tells of one man's quest for retribution beyond all reason as he, the protag (Irons), takes on a bunch of hijackers while trying to avoid inquiries from government agents. Typically British in its austerity of production, this flick makes for a good middle-tier drama by creating a series of believable moral and practical dilemmas to which the well portrayed protagonist must react. A satisfying though not sterling blend of action, intrigue, and human drama, "The Fourth Angel" is not a no-brainer and, considering the complexity of the intrigue over the run time, is very well managed throughout. Not for Hollywood blockbuster freaks, this little import now on cable is well worth a look for those into foreign intrigue and movies that make you think but not too much. (B)

Jeremy Irons plays a journalist whose wife and daughters are killed right in front him during a plane hijacking; he is left alone with his 10-year-old son and finds himself unable to deal with the fact that these hijackers are going to be getting off scott-free. Being a journalist, he uses his skills to find out where the hijackers will be and he takes it upon himself to even the score. This is an extremely intelligent and absorbing film about a difficult subject, handled with skill and grace by everyone involved. Irons is superb, as always, incapable of making a false move; he embues Jack Elgin with a stunning mixture of rage, frailty, horror and resolve. Forest Whitaker, another brilliant actor incapable of a false move, is also used to fine advantage, as the FBI agent assigned to the case and finding himself -=- SPOILER ALERT -=- understanding and sympathizing with Elgin -=- END OF SPOILER -=-, and the appearance of the fiercely intelligent Charlotte Rampling certainly doesn't hurt. The film is very hard to find - I bought my DVD online through JumboVideo in Canada. There's a very cool Featurette on this DVD, where everyone involved talks about the making of the film in great detail, very satisfying.