Violent City (1970)

"The Godfather" Gave You an Offer You Couldn't Refuse. "The Family" Gives You No Alternative

Violent City aka The Family

Along with The Mechanic (1972) this is one of my favorite Charles Bronson movies.  Violent City, as it's called in the United Kingdom from the original Italian title of Citta violenta, or The Family in the United States, is another Bronson hitman movie but it just might be his best one.

The opening car chase is reason enough to watch the movie because in my opinion, it's on par with the one from Bullitt (1968) or possibly even better.  Ok, maybe not better but it's still really damn good.  Instead of the hilly and wide, winding streets of San Francisco, this chase is through the narrow roads, walkways and staircases of the Virgin Islands's shanty towns.  Like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Bronson drives a Mustang.

An American hitman, Jeff Heston, (Bronson) is out for a leisurely drive with his lady-friend, Vanessa Shelton, (Jill Ireland) when a pair of goons in a midsize sedan start to follow them through the streets of St. Martin.  After the car chase, Heston chances upon his good friend Coogan sitting in a Porsche in the middle of the road, but when Heston gets out of his Mustang to greet him, Coogan shoots him point blank.  The goons arrive and try to finish Heston off but he rolls under the Mustang and manages to shoot them all before passing out from his own gunshot wound.

Heston wakes up in the hospital and is thrown in jail shortly thereafter where he has time to think about the woman he has fallen in love with and how he's finished with the assassination business.  When he is finally released he dismisses new job offers in order to get revenge on Coogan and to track down Vanessa. 

Coogan is a race car driver and during one of his races, Heston sets up shop in some brush a distance from the track.  He snipes the tire of Coogan's car who then veers off the track and dies in a fiery explosion.  But somebody has seen Heston in action and he soon receives photographs of himself shooting Coogan's tire.  Now he must find out who is blackmailing him.

Heston does eventually find Vanessa in New Orleans and it turns out she's kind of a gold-digging skank, but he still loves her.  She, however, is quite content without him. 

The blackmail trail leads to his old boss, Weber (Telly Savalis) who wants Heston back working for him.  Heston refuses, but guess who he sees skinny dipping in Weber's pool?  The power-hungry hussy, Vanessa Shelton, that's who.  She and Heston begin another affair but he finally realizes that she doesn't truly love him.  In fact, she may be one of the people conspiring against him.  Heston is forced to make some tough decisions and a lot of people end up dead.

Violence Rating: 3 out of 5
Booby Rating: 2 out of 5

Tomorrow we'll wrap up Charles Bronson Week with a review by Zoltan of a Chuck Norris movie.  I don't know about you but I'm getting pretty tired of Bronson films.  Just kidding.  I'm going to watch Kinjite and The Stone Killer now.

Buy Violent City Unrated at 
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Rent Violent City by mail from GreenCine.com.

Someone Behind the Door (1971)

No memory, no name, no mind: This man will act out someone else's insanity and revenge. 

Someone Behind the Door

I was hesitant to review this film because it's rather obscure and because it will bore most of you to tears.  I'll tell you what, if you want to see Charles Bronson crush a giant Mexican's junk with his meaty paw and then kill him by stepping on his throat, watch The Evil that Men Do.  If you want to see Bronson show off his acting chops in a slow Hitchcockian thriller, watch Someone Behind the Door.  This film was made before Bronson became the 1980s tough-guy vigilante and caricature of himself, so he actually does some acting in it.  In fact, the performances are the best part of this film.  

An amnesiac (Bronson) is brought to the hospital by a local fisherman after the confused man is found wandering on the beach.  Dr. Laurence Jeffries (Anthony Perkins), a neurosurgeon, examines him and tells his staff that the man is just drunk and that he is going to give him a ride to the train station.  Instead, he takes the man to his home.

He tells the mysterious stranger that he's going to help the man regain his memory, but he has sinister plans.  Dr. Jeffries's wife (Jill Ireland) is having an affair and he knows about it.  His plan (as preposterous as it is) is to use psychological tricks to convince this simple, violent amnesiac with "schizophrenic tendencies" that Dr. Jeffries's wife is actually the amnesiac's wife and that the man she's having the affair with murdered her.  This way Bronson's character will become enraged and kill the man Dr. Jeffries's wife is sleeping with (because he thinks she's his wife and that this man killed her) and Jeffries won't be implicated in the murder.  It doesn't make any sense because even if this plan worked, the police would still figure out what was going on when they questioned Bronson's character.  But whatever.  Things don't go exactly as planned anyway. 

In St. Ives we (the royal "we".  You know, the editorial...) saw a restrained, less violent version of Charles Bronson which seemed strange considering the ultra-violent Bronson movie stereotype.  In Someone Behind the Door, Bronson gives us a character that is downright vulnerable, confused and emotionally weak.

The performances are what make this movie worth watching.  Anthony Perkins again plays a variation of his Psycho character, but plays it well.  Jill Ireland is convincing (and easy on the eyes) as the wife of the not-so-good doctor and Bronson gives one of his best performances.  The plot is indeed preposterous, but the director, Nicolas Gessner (who also directed The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane) almost makes it seem plausible until the final confrontation when everything just falls apart.  The ending just feels weak.

Violence Rating: 2 out of 5
Booby Rating: 2 out of 5

Girls of Grindhouse: Jill Ireland

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Death Wish II (1982)

First His Wife. Now His Daughter. It's Time To Even The Score!

Death Wish II

Welcome to Charles Bronson Week.  He was in something like 80 movies so I'll try to cover at least a few of them this week.  The first is Death Wish II.

In the original Death Wish,  New York architect and "bleeding heart liberal" Paul Kersey (Bronson) is at work when a group of thugs including Jeff Goldblum breaks into his home, rapes his daughter and kills his wife.  Kersey takes it upon himself to rid the streets of these scumbags with a nickel-plated .32 Colt revolver, and becomes a hero of the people of New York.  Because the crime rate was so drastically reduced and because the people would be in an uproar if Kersey was killed or arrested, the police let him go under the condition that he leaves New York permanently.

Death Wish II is completely different.  It takes place in Los Angeles and this time when thugs, including Laurence Fishburne, break into Kersey's home, his maid gets raped and killed and his daughter gets kidnapped... and then also gets raped, and because she is insane from the trauma of being raped in the original Death Wish , she runs through a window and impales herself on a fence.

"No!  This jacket is for Members Only!"

Paul Kersey becomes the leathery face of vengeance once again.  He rents a room in a crappy downtown hotel and walks the streets at night hunting down those drug-addled rapists who killed his maid and daughter and any other punks who get in his way.

News of the Los Angeles vigilante reaches New York and the police there know that Paul Kersey is up to his old tricks.  They also know that if he's caught by the LAPD, it will come to light that the NYPD knew of Kersey, had him in custody and let him go when he was killing bad guys in New York.  To cover their asses they send a detective to stop him.  Now Kersey is both the hunter and the hunted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (or write it in this case), every Charles Bronson movie is a good one just because Bronson is in it, and Death Wish II is no exception.  He was a man among men.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 3 or maybe a 3.5 out of 5

Get Death Wish 2 at TLACult.com

The Mechanic (1972)

He fixes people so they never work again.

The Mechanic

The Mechanic features a typically stoic and leathery Charles Bronson and a young Jan-Michael Vincent who some of you might remember from the 1980s TV series "Airwolf."  He starred opposite Ernest Borgnine as the pilot of a top secret helicopter that defied the laws of physics and took on the Soviets every week for three seasons. I thought Jan-Michael Vincent was dead but after a quick Google search, it turns out it was just his career that died.

Bronson and Vincent spend 100 minutes trying to out-squint one another. Who will win!?  I mean...  After killing an associate, an aging hitman or "mechanic" (Bronson) takes the dead man's 24 year old son (Vincent) under his wing to teach him the tricks of the trade.  Vincent makes an excellent student and learns quickly.  However, Bronson's employers don't like the idea of having two assassins working together and Vincent receives instructions to take Bronson out.  Bronson learns about the orders, and the master and student play a psychological game of cat and mouse until the explosive end. 

"Quick! Staring contest. Me and you now!"

Every Bronson movie is a good movie just because he's in it, but The Mechanic is an especially good one.  There's plenty of action and explosions as you can see in the trailer, but unfortunately there is no boobage.  Bronson does however smoke a pipe in the film so, you know, he's got that going for him.

Violence Rating:  3 out of 5
Pipe Smoking Rating:  2.5 out of 5
Booby Rating:  1 out of 5

Get The Mechanic at TLACult.com