Love and Bullets Flm Review

Mainly bullets. Any action film that comes in under 90-minutes gets an appreciative nod from me these days. Director Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke, The Laughing Policeman. The Drowning Pool) keeps this film slim and on target with less fat than a Thanksgiving turkey in January. Charles Bronson is at his most mellow here - rarely showing much emotion or interest. But it is Bronson and fortunately not another Death Wish film. The script in fact is from Wendell Mayes who wrote Death Wish, but before that some highly regarded films - Von Ryan's Express, The Enemy Below, Advise and Consent, Anatomy of a Murder. His Bronson films feel like a step down or a sign of where the film industry was. Bronson once again teams up with his wife, Jill Ireland, and though underused the cast also has Rod Steiger, Henry Silva, Strother Martin and Bradford Dillman. One wonders if their roles were supposed to be larger but were cut down somewhere along the line. The script is a little messy but keeps moving. Through the snows of Switzerland.

Bronson is a cop in small-town Arizona and stops another cop who plans to kill top gangster Bomposa (Steiger) who has been selling bad drugs that killed his girlfriend. Bronson has coffee with him in a café and somehow the gangsters planted a bomb in the cop's car in the few minutes they were inside. Never leave home without a bomb. Just in case. Bomposa isn't a bad guy really - he likes old Jeanette MacDonald musicals and loves his dimwitted moll Jackie (Ireland). Steiger for reasons of his own I expect, gives his character a stutter. When the organization tells him that Jackie knows too much and has to go, he reluctantly gives the go ahead. And turns over a table of food because he is so upset. All that food gone to waste. Hard to kill the woman you love even for a lousy gangster, but you have to do what you have to do. Who do you call when you want someone killed? Henry Silva of course.

The FBI sends Bronson over to protect her and get her to testify. She is living in a chalet in Switzerland with a couple guards, a dog and a wig that Dolly Parton would be proud of. Bronson grabs her, tells her killers are coming for them and they go on the run. But not with great smarts. But very scenic. The train with the cars on it is very neat. For some reason, he didn't bring a gun and even when he kills one of them, he doesn't take his gun. He prefers a makeshift blow gun that he can shoot darts some 40-yards and hit his target. Has he been practicing in Arizona? Everywhere he goes, the bad guys are right there. Try taking a plane next time. When she tells him, "I have never slept with a man because I wanted to. Till now", poor Bronson has to have sex with his wife again.