Takes itself way too seriously

Masterful Movie

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I can only extend what previous author douglasp wrote with precisely describing my sentiments about this Vanishing Son IV.When you develop interesting characters with truly interesting, at times even artistic and passionate results, particularly in first of the four... considering some limitation of this genre, Vanishing Son never deserved this embarrassing economizing $ummation of literally making a sequel for sake of sequel. The story itself is truly insulting to anyone who had seen the previous 3. Had they made some DVD release this would be at best, something to consider as barely worthy as extra feature. Alone on its own, it has nothing to do with previous movies. Surely leaves bitter taste of disappointment.It only exploits the viewer's interest in characters with absolutely nothing to offer. Who ever made decision to even consider this idea… truly had no idea what he was doing.

In the mid-90's, Universal embarked on a television experiment called Action-Pak, if I recall correctly. Each week, they would show an action movie, some based on other Universal properties, like Midnight Run and Knight Rider, and others new, like Tek War and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.Vanishing Son was one of the better movies series and was popular enough to go onto a weekly syndicated TV series, along with Hercules. Unfortunately, near the end of the experiment, Universal must have been running out of money, because this movie is nothing more then a retrospective of the previous three movies. Maybe these retrospective things are great for the studios and actors, but as a viewer, I can't help but feel ripped off. It also sours the legacy of the previous three films which were all excellent.