Charles Bronson is one of those actors who most of us know, but might be hard-pressed to name more than a couple of his movies. “Death Wish,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “Once Upon a Time in the West.” After that, things get a little iffy. Was he in “The Great Escape?” And yet he was considered a movie star.
Bronson had a face like a granite quarry: rugged, expressionless and not very pretty. And he spoke with a lisp, which way too many of his onscreen enemies took as a sign of weakness. They'd usually learn of their mistake the hard way. Still, Bronson made a career out of playing stoic tough guys doling out rough justice who might have had a heart of gold deep down if the right woman were doing the digging.
That's pretty much what happens in Sergio Sollima's “Violent City,” a crazy Italian crime film from 1970 that's just been reissued on DVD. A twisted tale told in meandering flashbacks and bad foreign dubbing, “Violent City” is still a great showcase for Bronson's unique brand of ugly McQueen screen presence. In the film he plays a lone-wolf hit man who gets double-crossed by a backstabbing bikini-clad blonde (Bronson's real-life wife Jill Ireland) and a loony mob boss played by a pre-Kojak Telly Savalas.
Charles Bronson is one of those actors who most of us know, but might be hard-pressed to name more than a couple of his movies. Chris Nashawaty has more.
Made on the cheap, but packed with giddy car chases, brawls, seedy locations, strange pacing, and one particularly gorgeous and haunting assassination scene during the film's final moments, Violent City is by no means Bronson's best movie. But it's worth checking out nonetheless. For a guy who never made acting look especially pretty, it may be the perfect match for his unique brand of macho, man-of-few-words charm.
Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in “The Great Debaters,” Denzel Washington directs a story about an African-American speech team; in “Young Indiana Jones,” the TV show about Harrison Ford as a teen adventurer gets a box set; and in “First Sunday,” Ice Cube holds up a church and sees the error of his ways.