The Stone Killer (1973)

Back in the day, before he became involved in Cannon Films' identikit vigilante cop movies and seemingly endless Death Wish sequels, Charles Bronson was a huge star of action movies.  Re-watching The Stone Killer (1973), it was easy to see why: you knew exactly what you were getting with Bronson and he delivered every time.  Sure, he was an actor with limited range and always played the 'Charles Bronson role' - a strong, silent, character who prefers decisive action to talk or prevarication, betraying little of his inner self in his outer behaviour - but he was very good at playing that role.  Despite his limitations as an actor, he delivered what lines he was given surprisingly effectively in his distinctive voice, usually displaying a dry wit, which always made his characters curiously likeable, despite their proclivity for violence and disregard for such things as morality or subtlety.  Most of all, he had undoubted screen presence - when he's on screen, you can't take your eyes off of him.  The Stone Killer is a pretty good example of Bronson at his peak, before he became a parody of himself in those eighties Cannon productions.

Clearly inspired by the success of the Dirty Harry movies, The Stone Killer casts Bronson as one of those rogue cops so beloved by seventies film makers.  (It was pretty much obligatory around this time for every action movie star to appear in one such movie - even John Wayne got in on the act playing a superannuated rogue cop beating up hippies in McQ (1974)).  As with others of this ilk, Bronson's character isn't bent and doesn't actually take the law into his own hands, but he does push it to the limits and certainly has little regard for the rights of the perps he deals with.  To demonstrate that he's actually quite liberal, he is teamed with am openly racist and rule-breaking cop, rather startlingly played by Ralph Waite - Pa Walton himself, an actor usually associated with far gentler and avuncular roles.  The plot of The Stone Killer feels, in places, impenetrable, as hit men themselves get hit, Mafia Dons mumble on about stuff that happened forty years ago and the action ricochets between New York and LA.  But there are an abundance of extremely well-staged action set pieces, culminating in a chaotic shoot out in a multi-storey car park, to keep the viewer occupied and stop them asking too many questions about the plot.  

The film is directed by Michael Winner, who might be a deeply unfashionable director nowadays, but he fact is that, back in the seventies, he delivered a number of exceptionally well crafted action movies of this type.  The Stone Killer is a very professionally made piece of cinema - it doesn't skimp on the action, it is well shot, making excellent use of its locations, maintains a good pace and features a strong supporting cast, including the afire-mentioned Waite, Norman Fell, Paul Koslo, John Ritter, Stuart Margolin and Martin Balsam.  On top of that, it has Charles Bronson at its centre,his monument-like features and performance stoically holding it all together.  Interestingly, its source was a UK-set novel by John Gardener in which the hero's first name was Derek, rather than Lou, as it was in the film.  (On a personal side note, in 2007 Gardener dropped dead of a heart attack outside of my local branch of W H Smith - something that went pretty much unremarked upon locally at the time).  Bronson and Winner might both be out of fashion these days, but quite a bit of their work from the seventies is well worth revisiting.