Mr Majestyk (1974)

Another film that, back in the day, was a regular in the TV schedules, but which seems to have vanished from view.  Which is a pity, as I always felt it an above average Charles Bronson vehicle.  Directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Elmore Leonard, it was certainly streets ahead of any of the cannon-produced vehicles Bronson spent the eighties making.  It is actually somewhat more sophisticated than the trailer makes it out to be, trying to give the impression it is somehow in the mould of the then recently released violent revenge hit Walking Tall.  Whereas that film left a large degree of moral ambiguity surrounding the actions of its hero, Mr Majestyk is incontrovertibly a good guy forced into action by organised crime.   It is his opponents who escalate the violence, he merely acts in defence of the interests of himself and his employees.

A briskly paced film which feels much shorter than its 103 minutes, Mr Majestyk provides the audience with a constant stream of action sequences that play to Bronson's strengths.  It also provides him with a worthy adversary in the form of Al Lettieri, one of the truly great players of violent scum bags during the seventies, as a mob hitman.  There's also good support from the likes of Lee Purcell and Linda Cristal, (whose character, a union organiser, is, perhaps surprisingly for this sort of film, presented sympathetically).   At the end of the day, what's not to like about a film that presents Charles Bronson as a two-fisted melon farmer and gives us a sequence where mobsters machine gun a crop of melons?  A big hit on its release. Mr Majestyk really deserves a revival - it is certainly a lot better than most of the eighties Bronson movies which continually turn up on TV these days, providing a far better tribute to an iconic action star.