It's hard to believe that director J. Lee Thompson, the man responsible for this amateurish, artless time passer, is the same guy who created such beautifully filmed movies like his "White Buffalo," from 1977. But "Evil That Men Do" is, alas, an 80's flick, a time when action movies could still be very entertaining, while sorely lacking in the aesthetic department. Maybe Thompson was past his prime here, or maybe he just was more concerned with making a buck than with the art of film making. Bronson is at his usual best, as a retired assassin, living a life of peace and serenity in the Cayman Islands. An old contact implores him to travel to Guatemala to take down the vicious Molloch, head of a facility that uses extreme torture to control a Nation and get confessions out of political agitators who dare speak against the corrupt regime at the time. The brutality of this movie has been wildly exaggerated by many reviewers here, who have described it as the roughest movie they ever saw. These people obviously haven't been exposed to very much, and would probably drop dead if they ever saw a movie like "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS." Aside from a very nasty torture scene at the beginning, involving electrocution, and some very graphic descriptions of other various tortures, the violence level isn't any more extreme than what you would see in "Rambo: First Blood." Filmed on location in exotic locales like Guatemala and the Cayman Islands, but these locations are wasted due to a complete lack of visual flair of any kind. It's very average stuff that covers territory that has been heavily treaded before, and with much better results. It's an ok time passer, and Bronson fans will undoubtedly enjoy seeing the man in top form here. But for those with higher standards, you would do better to seek out J' Lee Thompson's earlier films with Bronson, such as "White Buffalo." That is certainly a classic, especially compared to lackluster stuff like this..
Review of The Evil That Men Do
