If you like "Charles Bronson movies" you'll like this Charles Bronson movie. We find him here, with his bandido mustache, in the rare role of a tough rogue cop who busts up the syndicate. The film opens with a shooting contest in New York between Bronson and a Puerto Rican kid who "wanted to be a comic book hero." One of the two winds up dead. Cut to the obligatory scene in which Bronson places his shield and his piece on the desk of his superiors.
Yes, he's fired in New York, but he's welcomed by the LAPD. Working with a half-competent redneck partner, Lieutenant Bronson uncovers a plot by an old Mafia leader to wipe out the heads of all the other New York families because of a massive insult that took place forty-two years ago. The instrument of Martin Balsam's revenge will be the trained warriors who have returned deranged from their experiences in Vietnam. They, not Bronson, are the eponymous stone killers. Bronson is just an ordinary killer.
Lots of familiar faces in the cast but they fail to lift it above the average "Charles Bronson movie." The location switches from coast to coast but that doesn't make any difference either. It's all derivative.
When Bronson investigates a suspicious hippy girl -- this is 1972 -- we may recognize the location in which Paul Newman confronted Strother Martin in "Harper." The same gaggle of vegetarian goons are present, dressed like clowns, but this time the leader of the group goes into a rather interesting lecture on how "the blood of the cow and the animal fat clog up yer celebral arteries," and he delivers this encomium to carrots in what sounds like a Scandinavian accent.
I don't know what the novel was like but it's been turned into a pulp movie full of shoot outs, cars chasing motorcycles on city streets, cars chasing cars in roiling clouds of dust across the desert floor, cars chasing cars in an underground parking garage -- and foot chases, in which man chases man in varying milieus. The environment I liked best was the mansion in the Mojave Desert, the house with the mastodon ribs as part of the decor.
The musical score toggles between two modalities. There are the irritating metallic electronic guitars, which you can hear playing the main theme behind the opening credits. Then there is the suspense/action theme that is shamelessly ripped off from the still-quivering flank of "Bullet", including the ostinato that begins when Lieutenant Bullet snaps on his seat belt before the big chase.
There's not much to be said about the acting. Martin Balsam handles the few lines of Italian well, considering that he's not a paisan. To make the story complete, somewhere along the line some fox should have lost her clothes and thrown herself at Bronson so that he could turn her away with a superior remark.
Yes, he's fired in New York, but he's welcomed by the LAPD. Working with a half-competent redneck partner, Lieutenant Bronson uncovers a plot by an old Mafia leader to wipe out the heads of all the other New York families because of a massive insult that took place forty-two years ago. The instrument of Martin Balsam's revenge will be the trained warriors who have returned deranged from their experiences in Vietnam. They, not Bronson, are the eponymous stone killers. Bronson is just an ordinary killer.
Lots of familiar faces in the cast but they fail to lift it above the average "Charles Bronson movie." The location switches from coast to coast but that doesn't make any difference either. It's all derivative.
When Bronson investigates a suspicious hippy girl -- this is 1972 -- we may recognize the location in which Paul Newman confronted Strother Martin in "Harper." The same gaggle of vegetarian goons are present, dressed like clowns, but this time the leader of the group goes into a rather interesting lecture on how "the blood of the cow and the animal fat clog up yer celebral arteries," and he delivers this encomium to carrots in what sounds like a Scandinavian accent.
I don't know what the novel was like but it's been turned into a pulp movie full of shoot outs, cars chasing motorcycles on city streets, cars chasing cars in roiling clouds of dust across the desert floor, cars chasing cars in an underground parking garage -- and foot chases, in which man chases man in varying milieus. The environment I liked best was the mansion in the Mojave Desert, the house with the mastodon ribs as part of the decor.
The musical score toggles between two modalities. There are the irritating metallic electronic guitars, which you can hear playing the main theme behind the opening credits. Then there is the suspense/action theme that is shamelessly ripped off from the still-quivering flank of "Bullet", including the ostinato that begins when Lieutenant Bullet snaps on his seat belt before the big chase.
There's not much to be said about the acting. Martin Balsam handles the few lines of Italian well, considering that he's not a paisan. To make the story complete, somewhere along the line some fox should have lost her clothes and thrown herself at Bronson so that he could turn her away with a superior remark.