Review: Mr. Majestyk - 1974

Mr. Majestyk

Director: Richard Fleischer

1974

Action

The only thing Mr. Majestyk really cares about is his melons. The only thing on his mind is to harvest them and do it in his own righteous way. He doesn’t like it when other try to force him to hire help or when they oppress the Mexican minorities. He communicates his opinions to the local thugs i.e. with violence. This in turn means that he’s now has an assault charge to sort out with the police. They claim that he’s beaten a man with a rifle but the truth is that it in fact was the guy own rifle and that it only seconds earlier was pointed at Mr. Majestyk! The police doesn’t believe him of course and he’s soon on a prison transport together with a infamous thug and contract killer. The transport krasches but Mr. Majestyk doesn’t help the gangster, instead he plans to get him taken in by the police again. After all, the most impostant thing is to harvest the melons…. This makes the thug hate him at such a level that he will stop at nothing to get him killed! But Mr. Majestyk is not an easy target…

Many, many years ago, before it became old-fashioned to rent movies in physical stores, my local stores was raided by me and my friends in order to get all the films staring or co-staring Charles Bronson. Everything was of interest so after a while there was nothing left to see. I would like to say that I saw millions of Bronsons films during this period but thirty or forty is more truthful! About the same time I also saw Swamp Thing or possible it’s sequel Return of the Swamp Thing where a you girl, possible Heather Locklear, was threatened by some bad guys. She told them that the police was on their way, The CIA, FBI and… CHARLES BRONSON!! He was also the ultimate weapon in a radio sketch during that time. It was a comedy radio show called Sextio Sekunda Minuter where the Russian and American leaders brags about their weapons. They tried to scare each other with their fantastic arsenals. They threatened each other with double nuclear bombs and all kind of exaggerated weaponry until the American leader won the argument by claiming he would send in CHARLES BRONSON!

The reputation he had was about his own personal being, not the characters he portrayed in the movies. This release has a couple of great quotes I’d like to add to that conclusion. For instance, Don’t Fuck with Bronson. It says a lot about this actor. I wonder if it would be just to call him  the king of the revenge movies? I think you could say that! Loads of movies with a talent that forgives the sole impression on his face. You can’t fail!

This is a really tough film and Charles Bronson makes it even tougher. It’s rumored that Clint Eastwood initially was to play the leading part but I don’t think that would have been as good and tough as this is. Clint is tough to be sure, but not as tough as Brosnon! The storyline is pretty stupid. But that’s to be expected from a revenge film like this. They’re almost always the same. That the thug would be so stupid and proud that he would seek revenge at all costs is absurd. It’s also far fetched that Mr.Majestyk should be so manipulative that he could outsmart the whole organization of criminals.

But essentially I have no problem with that. We want our hero to succeed and we really don’t care what character his in. When Bronson did these movies, hi did them with himself as a main character. I mean that it’s BRONSON we like to see, we don’t really care what his characters name is and if he grow melons for a living or not. Charles Bronson IS the ultimate weapon!

8/10