Charles Bronson

  • Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

    Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2020) Paul Kelso is back once more… to kill and kill again. While the opening (a dream sequence in which Kelso easily guns down a few stereotypical rapists only to see himself killed) does seem promising in exploring the moral consequences of being a vigilante, the rest of Death Wish 4: The Crackdown soon dispenses with the fiction of depth, and goes gunning hard. This time, the excuse is drugs. Tons of drugs, flowing around Los Angeles and killing (because you need a victim) the daughter of Kelso’s current paramour. It doesn’t take much more than that to send Kelso shooting through the Los Angeles underworld once more, mowing down mooks on the trail of the big mob boss. Architect by day and bloodthirsty murderer by night, Kelso has to face corrupt cops and deliver lame quips along the way to fulfill the requirement of this Cannon production. I obviously wasn’t intending to enjoy the film when I sat down to watch it – I was doing more or less out of completionism obsession, having seen four of the five instalments and having number 4 right there on the DVR. I did have a moderate amount of fun questioning the perspective of Kelsey being a complete psychopath within a movie trying to excuse his actions, but that’s not a whole lot. Much of Death Wish 4’s execution is bland and unremarkable, erring on the side of a low budget and simply moving pieces until it’s time for the next shootout. Charles Bronson looks old and tired here, clearly getting a paycheque but not much artistic fulfillment from going through the same motions with even less justification. The ending is mean-spirited enough to justify having the protagonist put a rocket through the villain, providing at least one highlight for the film. In retrospect, Death Wish 4 does make the craziness of the third instalment feel even more enjoyable: this fourth film has nothing more than a few preachy clichés to say about the scourge of drugs as window-dressing to some righteous serial killing for the protagonist.

  • Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994)

    Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) Some people have addiction problems, but by this point in the Death Wish series, protagonist Paul Keslo’s serial killing problem has just become a grim parody of the first few movies—which, considering the blatantly cartoonish nature of the third film, is saying something. This time, Keslo’s close relatives are being brutalized and killed by rich people, which puts a different but not really any more acceptable spin on things. Charles Bronson (as Keslo) is grandpa killer by then, looking old and bored in his final theatrical starring role, as he once again murders for revenge in creative ways more reminiscent of slasher movies than earnest revenge. Although the film nods slightly in the direction of the character’s previous crime sprees, there isn’t much done with the psychology of someone who always sees killing as a solution to revenge. (Although that suggests a different parodic direction for the series—at 64, one year away from retirement, office avenger Paul Keslo kills co-workers who didn’t return his stapler, don’t wash their hands in the washroom and took away his lunch in the break room!) More amusing than dramatic, but far more boring than amusing, Death Wish V pushes the series’ five instalments even further past their due date.

  • Death Wish 3 (1985)

    Death Wish 3 (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) I’ve been plumbing the depths of 1980s Hollywood lately, and movies seldom get as crazy as Death Wish III. If the original 1974 film was arguably a statement on early-1970s urban crime and the second 1982 film became an outright exploitation picture, this third instalment goes full-on bonkers in an attempt to give more to the target audience. Here we have the series protagonist (once again played by Charles Bronson, here in his mid-sixties) coming back to New York to visit an old army buddy. Except that the cops know what he’s done and are aware of the bad neighbourhood where he’s going and they have a deal for him: kill as many criminals as you want, and let us claim the credit. With a setup like that, it’s no surprise to find out that the protagonist’s army buddy is one of the last decent people in a crime-ridden neighbourhood where even the police fear to tread. Put together as if someone had no experience of American cities other than the worst crime dramas of the 1980s, this neighbourhood hosts ludicrous gangs with stylish looks that pretty much do whatever they want to anyone. Bronson steps in with a crime-fighting attitude and an unexplained supply of heavy weaponry. It all escalates ludicrously to out-and-out urban warfare by the end of the film, complete with anti-tank rockets being used to dispatch opponents. We’re far, far away from the 1970s angst of revenge here … and that may be part of the film’s peculiar charm. The Death Wish series has never been about serious exploration of issues, and while Death Wish 3 is fantastical in the way it treats New York City as a playground for explosive mayhem … at least it’s a bit less hypocritical about its intention. It’s really not a good movie, but at least it’s interesting in its craziness. In keeping with the series’ tradition of having a famous actor in an early role, here we have the always-stunning Marina Sirtis playing a victim of the hooligans. I’m not even covering half the nonsense of the film: Suffice to say that Death Wish 3 inches toward the have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed category of the worst of 1980s Hollywood. Alas, there’s a lot of competition in that field, but still: at least it’s an improvement over Death Wish 2.

  • Death Wish 2 (1982)

    Death Wish 2 (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) The original 1974 Death Wish was a piece of exploitation filmmaking relying on the revenge fantasies of its audiences, but it could at least point to the growing urban crime rates in mid-seventies American cities as justification. It clearly expressed something about its times and refrained from a number of excesses—There was a feeling, pervasive throughout many of the similar gritty urban thriller of the 1970s, that while satisfying on a primal level, this kind of revenge was not a good thing, either for the protagonist or for everyone around him. Sequel Death Wish 2 from a slightly different time, as the bleak realism of the 1970s was being transformed into the violent escapism of the 1980s. Relocating to bright sunny California, this sequel follows the mild-mannered protagonist (played by Charles Bronson, still one of the most confounding choices for an action hero) as his daughter (and maid; let’s not forget about the maid) are assaulted, raped or killed by hippie hoodlums. In keeping with series tradition (with Jeff Goldblum being in the first film in a minor role as a hoodlum), here we have Lawrence Fishburne in a small role as a hoodlum who assaults, rapes, kills, etc., all of the protagonist’s female acquaintances. Cue the bloody revenge, this time with far less soul-searching given that the protagonist has done this before and because audiences expect the kills rather than the personal anguish. Police are once again useless in the neon demimonde of L.A. at night, although there’s a nod to the events of the first film as the police suspect but cannot prove that our death-thirsty protagonist is behind the escalating mayhem. There may be something interesting in how the film must create a bleak universe of rampant urban crime in order to justify its ludicrous plot (read comments made by the film’s producer and screenwriter for some distasteful justifications) but the problem is that since 1982 we’ve seen this manoeuvre make its way from movies to national politics with terrifying results. The manoeuvre is transparent and as a result Death Wish 2 never earns the sympathy for the victims that would propel it forward. Instead, it’s laid bare for exactly what it is: an exploitative cash grab playing serious issues for not much more than cynical thrills.

  • The Mechanic (1972)

    The Mechanic (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2018) It’s a tale as old as Hollywood: The remake comes out and everybody bemoans that it’s not the original. When the Jason Statham-headlined The Mechanic remake came out in 2011, I made a mental note to check the original. It took me a while, but I finally got it done years later as one French-Canadian channel had itself a nice little Charles Bronson marathon. Having seen the result, I don’t think I wasted all of these years not knowing. The Mechanic is very obviously a product of the early 1970s, with a whiff of drug-fuelled existentialism making a fairly simple action thriller get weirder than it should have been. It follows and deconstructs the lifestyle of a renowned assassin as he goes through his contracts and slowly seduces a younger man into his own way of seeing things. By necessity, our protagonist (played by Bronson) is an absolute loner—paying for call girls and quietly appreciating the expensive entertainment that his job pays for. His life gets more complicated when he’s asked to take on a younger partner, and both men’s styles clash. It’s not headed to a happy ending, but then again neither does the film have a happy middle or a happy beginning. Typically dark, grimy and off-putting for a film of its era, The Mechanic seems content to offer a counter-programming alternative to the better-known action movies of the era. Any hint of a homosexual relationship between the two lead characters is not accidental: the original script reportedly had it explicitly detailed and we can only regret the adulteration of that choice—it would have made the movie quite a bit more interesting than the one that made it to screen. In the end, what we have is a dourer Bronson vehicle that fails to impress except, perhaps, for its accidental period patina. Even though the remake wasn’t particularly remarkable, it still feels like an improvement over the original.

  • C’era una volta il West [Once Upon a Time in the West] (1968)

    C’era una volta il West [Once Upon a Time in the West] (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2018) Is Once Upon a Time in the West the western to end all westerns? Probably not, but watching it after seeing Sergio Leone’s Eastwood-led man-with-no-name trilogy, I was struck at the sheer scope of his achievement here. Far from the low-budget heroics of A Fistful of Dollars, Leone goes for big-budget maximalism in showing how the railroad makes its way to an isolated western town, and the violence that ensues. It takes a while for everything to come into focus, but when it does we have a four-ring circus between a nameless protagonist (Charles Bronson’s “Harmonica,” and you know the tune he plays), a woman trying to transform herself in the West (Claudia Cardinale, captivating), an evil industrialist henchman (Henry Fonda, playing a villain!) and a bandit there to mess everything up (Jason Robart, not outclassed by anyone else). The four quadrants of the plot having been defined, the film then takes on its narrative speed—although at no fewer than 165 minutes and considering Leone’s typically contemplative style, there isn’t quite enough plot here to sustain the film’s duration. Still, it’s entertaining enough if you’re not in a hurry—This is clearly a film by someone who has seen a lot of westerns, and it regurgitates familiar elements in entertaining permutations. Plus there’s Leone’s visual style—the film’s best shot is a slow pullback from a man about to be hanged from an arch, with Monument Valley as a majestic backdrop. Not being much of a Western fanatic (although I appreciate it more and more as I see the best movies of the genre), I can say that there’s a limit to how much I can like Once Upon a Time in the West, but it was more entertaining than I expected, and almost as good as its lengthy running time would justify.

  • Death Wish (1974)

    Death Wish (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2018) The mid-seventies really weren’t a cheerful time for popular entertainment in general, or New York City in particular—Hollywood was still churning out reactions to being unshackled from the Hays Code, whereas NYC was experiencing unprecedented levels of crime. People wanted quick and simple solutions, and so a vigilante character stepped in, incarnated by Charles Bronson. Death Wish itself has spawned so many imitators—the basic story is visceral and easy enough to do on a low budget—that it does feel dull by today’s standard: The story moves along at a plodding pace, and the film feels long even at 94 minutes. Bronson is too old (and far too menacing) to play the part, but who cares—it’s the idea that counts, or more specifically the fantasy of taking complete revenge upon irremediable criminals. It would be easy enough to regret the normalization of revenge fantasies in pop culture (so much so that the 2018 remake of Death Wish passed along almost unnoticed in theatres) but that’s shouting at a horse long after it has left the barn. What matters most is the film’s keystone place in the landscape of mid-seventies cinema, and how it acts as the apogee of a dark-gritty-violent trend that would create an appetite for escapist fare along the lines of Star Wars. In many ways, there’s no need to see the original Death Wish—it’s been redone so often since then that it’s almost superfluous.

  • The Dirty Dozen (1967)

    The Dirty Dozen (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) Frankly, I thought that I would have enjoyed The Dirty Dozen quite a bit more than I did. Part of it may have been shaped by modern expectations—in modern Hollywood, movies based on the premise of bringing together hardened criminals for a suicide mission are meticulously polished to ensure that the criminals aren’t too bad, or that they meet a morally suitable comeuppance. Our heroes have been unjustly convicted, or operate according to a sympathetic code of honour that may not meet official approval. Their adventures, first in training and then in combat, are calculated to meet focus group approval. But The Dirty Dozen, having been forged in the years following the breakdown of the chaste Hayes Code, is significantly rougher and grittier than the modern ideal. The dirty dozen members are in for reprehensible conduct, not pseudo-criminal malfeasance. The attitude of the film, as Hollywood was pushing the limits of what was acceptable in terms of violence, also permeates everything. While tame by contemporary standards of gore, The Dirty Dozen nonetheless feels … dirty. There are a lot of characters, and they’re often short-changed by the film’s juggling of roles. This being said, The Dirty Dozen is also a showcase of actors: In between Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy and an impossibly young Donald Sutherland (among many others), there are a lot of familiar faces here, and that has its own appeal. If you can go along with the film’s disreputable atmosphere, it remains a competent war film … but it may be difficult to do so.