Movie Review: Chino (1973)

Also Known As: Valdez Horses; Valdez The Halfbreed  

Genre: Western  

Director: John Sturges  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Vincent Van Patten  

Running Time: 98 minutes  

Synopsis: The mixed-race Chino Valdez (Charles Bronson) was raised by a Cheyenne tribe, and now leads a solitary life breeding wild horses on an isolated ranch. He reluctantly shelters runaway teenager Jaime (Vincent Van Patten), who becomes a full-time helper. Evil wealthy landowner Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi) puts up fences and harms Chino's horses and business, but Maral's half-sister Catherine (Jill Ireland) wants to learn to ride horses, sparking a romance with Chino. The antagonized Maral intensifies his efforts to drive Chino away.

What Works Well: This adaptation of Lee Hoffman's book is a laid-back, slow-paced gallop, most interested in capturing frontier living and the glory of wild horses as filtered though downbeat early-1970s sensibilities. Director John Sturges allows the story to unfold at a leisurely pace, inserting only limited moments of action and focusing on Chino as an uncompromising loner, as wild as his horses and equally running out of time and space. Stoicism co-exists with tenderness within a man who only functions on his terms, yet possesses a heart big enough to accommodate first Jaime and then Catherine.

What Does Not Work As Well: The Dino De Laurentiis Italian-Spanish-French co-production features rudimentary staging, limited sets, and some choppy editing. For long periods, the horses are the only source of energy, and the characters of Morel and Catherine suffer from under-exposition.

Key Quote:

Chino (criticizing Catherine's riding technique): Aw, that's terrible - terrible! You're still bouncin'.

Catherine: I have to bounce some!

Chino: Yeah, I guess so. You have a lot of bouncy parts.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Death Wish II (1982)

Genre: Vigilante Action  

Director: Michael Winner  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Vincent Gardenia, Anthony Franciosa, Laurence Fishburne  

Running Time: 88 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, crime rates are out of control. Architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is victimized by a group muggers who kill his housekeeper and cause the death of his daughter. He decides to pursue vigilante justice by tracking  down and killing the assailants on his own. He keeps his revenge activities secret from his radio journalist girlfriend Geri (Jill Ireland), but New York City Police Lieutenant Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) is familiar with Kersey's previous vigilante exploits, and travels to Los Angeles to try and stop the new wave of killings.

What Works Well: Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus dust off one of Charles Bronson's best-known roles from a previous decade, and relaunch the series along the same formula. The objective of satisfying the primordial lust for process-free revenge is achieved, and director Michael Winner is also patient enough to give Paul Kersey a career and a love life. The action scenes are preceded by admirable preparation, reconnaissance, and selective targeting, while the bad guys (including an early role for Laurence Fishburne) are suitably despicable.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is a limited budget production with grimy aesthetics, unimaginative staging, creaky dialogue, cringey acting, excessive violence (including rape), gratuitous nudity, and of course unrealistic shootouts.

Key Quote:

Kersey (spotting a crucifix on a thug's necklace): You believe in Jesus?

Thug: Yes, I do.

Kersey: Well, you're gonna meet him.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Breakheart Pass (1975)

Genre: Western Mystery  

Director: Tom Gries  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Richard Crenna, Jill Ireland, Ed Lauter, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: In the 1870s, a military train is on its way to Fort Humboldt ostensibly to deliver essential medical supplies. The mission leader is Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna), accompanied by his lover Marica (Jill Ireland), while Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) commands the military escort unit. At a rest stop, U.S. Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) and his prisoner John Deakin (Charles Bronson) join the train trip. But all is not what it seems, and soon murders and mishaps threaten to derail the journey.

What Works Well: Alistair MacLean adapts his own book and director Tom Gries enjoys constructing an Agatha Christie-type mystery in a western milieu, assisted by a lithe Charles Bronson and a supporting cast deep in talent. The final 30 minutes finally kick into gear and deliver a rousing climax, including a harrowing train-top battle to the death choreographed by veteran stuntman Yakima Canutt. The exterior vistas of the train traversing the landscape are elegant, augmented by a magnanimous Jerry Goldsmith music score.

What Does Not Work As Well: The first hour is more annoying than enthralling, the lack of clarity around plot and motivations leaving the characters dangling. Even once revealed, the conspiracy lands somewhere between incomprehensible and unnecessarily convoluted. For a wanted criminal finally captured by the law, Bronson's John Deakin is afforded a remarkable amount of freedom to skulk around.

Conclusion: And then there were guns.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: From Noon Till Three (1976)

A western spiced with sly humour, From Noon Till Three toys with romance and action in a clever expression of the gap between legend and reality.

In the late 1800s, the outlaw Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson) rides with the little-known Buck Bowers gang. On the night before they rob the bank in Gladstone, Graham has a prophetic nightmare that the gang will be annihilated. The next morning he lies his way out of the robbery and waits for his colleagues at the grand house of the wealthy and beautiful widow Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland).

Amanda is initially fearful and resentful of Graham, but he artfully worms his way into her heart with elaborate lies, and they become lovers over three idyllic hours. The rest of the gang is killed or captured, and Graham is forced to flee a chasing posse. When Amanda is vilified for consorting with an outlaw, she unexpectedly takes control of her fate, creating a legend in the process.

Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy (adapting his own novel), From Noon Till Three is uneven in pacing and tone, but dares to be different while still respecting traditional western constructs. The plot features familiar components, including the outlaw gang, bank robbery, and chasing posse, all infused with subversive twists. The two central characters are worthwhile adversaries and both undoubtedly whip-smart, but outlaw Graham Dorsey is also a womanizing liar (if not an outright coward), and despite her blazing red dress, Amanda's true colours are cold and opportunistic.

The entire second act is an elaborate romance. The real-life husband and wife team of Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland have rarely been better together on the screen, and here engage in flirtatious theatre covering the spectrum from lust and hostility to the grandest love. Gilroy stages their affair at a mysteriously majestic mansion jutting out of the barren landscape, and allows star chemistry to flourish. An idyllic waltz in the music room provides an appropriate highlight.

Once the lovers are separated, Gilroy injects plenty of humour into the widening chasm between selling a story and gritty facts. The afternoon of love is propelled into the sphere of swoon-worthy legend with searing commentary on the power of marketing, celebrity worship, and the public thirst to believe in the fantastic. The myths of the west are built on tall tales, real people consumed by inflated retellings of ultimately outsized exploits.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Assassination (1987)

A rudimentary action movie, Assassination is a low-budget excuse for Charles Bronson to side-step a few explosions and cause a few of his own.

In Washington DC, senior Secret Service agent Jay Killian (Bronson) returns to work after some sick leave. With a new President about to the sworn in, Killian is disappointed to learn he is tasked with protecting the First Lady Lara Craig (Jill Ireland). Nevertheless, he gets down to work with his partner agent Charlotte Chang (Jan Gan Boyd).

Lara is opinionated and refuses to follow Killian's security advice. They clash frequently, but then a series of dangerous incidents convince Killian that Lara's life is being targeted. Her unusual relationship with the President also raises questions. Soon Lara and Killian are on the run, evading several attempts on her life.

Produced by Cannon Films and featuring the penultimate Jill Ireland screen performance, Assassination does a few (very few) things right. The spiky dynamic between the husband and wife pairing of Bronson and Ireland is easygoing and fairly enjoyable. The if it moves, it explodes scientific principle is staunchly applied. The explosions are never necessary, but always three times as big as they need to be. And the casting of Jan Gan Boyd as Killian's feisty partner (in more ways than one) is progressive, although she never comes close to convincing as a Secret Service agent.

Otherwise, the plot is beyond ridiculous, character definitions are non-existent, the wooden supporting actors are laughably inept, the villains are barely identified, the editing is often painfully amateurish, and the directing by Peter Hunt is distracted. Once Killian and Lara go on the run (in planes, trains, and automobiles, plus motorbikes), the film unravels into an endless series of escapes and near-misses strung together with no context. The movie becomes a boring playground for stunt performers and the pyrotechnic crew.

Assassination has no shortage of big bangs, but fizzles into a whimper.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Love And Bullets (1979)

A bungled chase thriller, Love And Bullets wastes a good cast on a ridiculous plot and lacklustre execution.

Phoenix detective Charlie Congers (Charles Bronson) is coerced by the FBI into traveling to a remote Switzerland ski resort to extract mobster floozy Jackie Pruit (Jill Ireland) from the clutches of the goons guarding her. She is the long-term lover of crime boss Joe Bomposa (Rod Steiger), and the FBI agents believe she will testify against him.

Joe reluctantly orders Jackie killed, and cold-blooded assassins Vittorio Farroni (Henry Silva) and Huntz (Paul Koslo) team up to try and terminate both Jackie and Charlie. A chase across Switzerland ensues, with Charlie forced to improvise an escape to Geneva. Along the way, he and Jackie start to fall in love.

Most of Love And Bullets consists of Charlie and Jackie getting on and off trains going up and down mountains, or trundling in the snow, all in an attempt to avoid faceless killers. The husband and wife team of Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland are pre-equipped with a natural ease, but even they appear skeptical a romance can blossom between a craggy Phoenix cop and a mobster's vacuous moll.

Meanwhile the film around them is an unconvincing mess, lacking depth, characterization, and sophistication. Rod Steiger's Bomposa is a cartoon-level villain, and Henry Silva ghosts through the movie as the imagined personification of intimidating evil, because he never wears his expensive overcoat; he just places it over his shoulders.

Cast members Strother Martin, Bradford Dillman, Michael V. Gazzo and Val Avery get to stand around and do not much of anything as the body count mounts, including a massacre of innocent civilians at a train stop, and not a single Swiss authority figure bothers to show up and investigate.

Director Stuart Rosenberg (a replacement for originally intended director John Huston) ensures the travelogue aspects in picturesque Switzerland are well covered, but finds the blandest escapes to keep Charlie and Jackie alive for 100 minutes, including improvising a most implausible blowgun weapon. Then a rushed climax manages to undo most of the preceding action for the sake of a final large explosion. When nothing works, forget the love and the bullets; just make way for the bomb.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Violent City (1970)

A revenge thriller set in the murky world of professional assassins, Violent City is a competent Charles Bronson vehicle, combining sharp action with a dark plot and fatalistic outlook.

Assassin-for-hire Jeff Heston (Bronson) is vacationing in the Virgin Islands with glamorous girlfriend Vanessa (Jill Ireland). They are suddenly pursued by assassins in a prolonged car chase, which ends with Heston shot and left for dead by Coogan, a former business partner. To add insult to Jeff's open wounds, Vanessa flees the scene with Coogan.

Jeff recovers and endures a stint in a grimy prison after being framed for murder. Once released, he sets out to seek revenge on Coogan, an amateur racing driver, but Heston is then blackmailed by New Orleans crime boss Al Weber (Telly Savalas), and Vanessa surprisingly pops up again as Weber's wife. Weber wants Jeff to work for him, but Jeff has other ideas, and the city is about to become a lot more violent with the control of a criminal empire at stake.

Directed by Spaghetti Western veteran Sergio Sollima and with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, Violent City (also known as The Family) is a European production which mixes Hollywood-style action with the higher continental tolerance for cerebral reflection. Call it a Spaghetti Urban, and the results are mixed. There is an occasional whiff of an econo-thriller trying hard to be bigger than the budget and talent involved, but the overall package delivers most of the required hard edged entertainment.

With Steve McQueen having set the standard for modern car chases two years earlier in Bullitt (1968), Bronson gets his own Mustang to play with, and damn if the opening supercharged chase sequence doesn't hold its own in the all-time tire squealing stakes. Gunning down the twisty narrow streets of a Caribbean island at ridiculous speeds, Bronson leads his pursuers on a breathless race that climaxes with a dazzling climb up a long, steep set of stairs.

The other action scenes are all quite good. Jeff carefully hunting down Coogan on the race track is a well-crafted exercise in patience and imperfection, while the climax featuring an outdoor elevator brings the Spaghetti Western love of drama in death to the fore.

With Bronson effectively delivering his typical stone-faced persona, Jill Ireland supports her husband with plenty of sexy sass, Vanessa emerging as a much more complex character than the initial playmate-on-a-yacht scenes suggest. As the film progresses Sollima mixes in film noir elements, Jeff gradually realizing that the forces aligned against him are much larger than he thought, and that his heart is parked in the wrong place. Vanessa's ever-shifting allegiances and Weber's attempt to recruit Heston evoke the spirit of Out Of The Past (1947). Telly Savalas adds smarmy polish as Weber.

In the traditions of the morally ambiguous Spaghetti Westerns, there are no heroes or well-meaning characters in Violent City. The objectives are all about seizing power, gaining control and eliminating your enemies, and in a city this violent, every well-executed revenge killing is just a prelude to the next death.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

The Movies Of Jill Ireland

All movies starring Jill Ireland and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Lola (1970, uncredited)

Rider On The Rain (1970)

Violent City (1970)

Cold Sweat (1970)

Someone Behind The Door (1971)

The Mechanic (1972)

The Valachi Papers (1972)

Chino (1973)

Breakout (1975)

Hard Times (1975)

Breakheart Pass (1975)

From Noon Till Three (1976)

Love And Bullets (1979)

Death Wish II (1982)

Assassination (1987)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Someone Behind The Door (1971)

A slow-paced psychological crime thriller, Someone Behind The Door is a French production set in England that offers some intriguing moments, but then over-thinks its own boundaries and drifts into the silly sphere.

In the small English town of Folkestone near Dover, Doctor Laurence Jeffries (Anthony Perkins) is a neurosurgeon with an interest in psychology. When a stranger (Charles Bronson) suffering from severe amnesia is found wandering among the sand dunes and dropped off at the hospital, Laurence takes him to his own home, claiming that he will try to help. Hesitantly, the stranger accepts the hospitality despite the doctor's somewhat creepy behaviour.

Laurence's wife Frances (Jill Ireland) asserts that she is off on a trip to London to visit her brother. Actually she is travelling to Paris to meet her lover Paul (Henri Garcin). Laurence is aware of his wife's infidelity, and starts to plot a complex revenge, using the stranger's lack of memory as an opportunity to have another man do the dirty work.

Severe memory loss is always a warning sign of a plot looking for a cheap device to play with, and Someone Behind The Door is no different. The stranger's amnesia is an empty vessel filled by Dr. Jeffries to concoct his revenge fantasy, but the script (co-written by director Nicolas Gessner) veers into extreme convolutions requiring plenty of suspended disbelief. Past the manipulation of a confused soul, Jeffries' plot simply does not hold together, and the amount of explaining he would be required to provide overpowers any limited amount of cleverness he may think he is demonstrating.

Gessner does succeed in setting a deliberate, slow and thoughtful pace, Someone Behind The Door at least allowing its two main characters time to plot, assess, and shape each step in their chess game. The setting of an interesting house in a sleepy seaside town is a plus, and the film demonstrates good potential as a stage production.

The acting is more entertaining than good. Charles Bronson stretches more than usual as the stranger, a character struggling against total amnesia and not even aware of his own name. It's quite the different role for Bronson, and despite frequently dropping into close-to-camp territory, he has fun conveying confusion, frustration and uncertainty. Perkins is expressionless, but his eyes work overtime to reveal the dark plotting going on behind the passive face. And Jill Ireland, in a relatively small role, appears more fetching and vibrant compared to most of her other performances in Bronson vehicles.

Someone Behind The Door ends with confrontation, anger and violence, the best laid plan reduced to a single heartbeat connecting two desperate people who have run out of options. It's more artistic than realistic, the person behind the door ultimately less important than the person in the mirror.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Breakout (1975)

A routine action movie built around Charles Bronson, Breakout is a superficial excuse for a few clunky set-pieces and little else.

Businessman Jay Wagner (Robert Duvall) is framed by his own family patriarch Harris Wagner (John Huston) for a murder, and thrown into a mountaintop Mexican prison to rot. Jay's wife Ann (Jill Ireland) turns to the resourceful but scuzzy Nick Colton (Bronson) to concoct a daring breakout. Colton is smitten by Ann, and agrees to help despite not knowing anything about Jay.

As Jay suffers torture by the brutal guards and gradually begins to lose hope, Colton recruits the help of his sidekick Hawk Hawkins (Randy Quaid) and former flame Myrna (Sheree North) to plan a series of escape attempts. When they are repeatedly foiled, Colton begins to suspect that Harris has spies hovering around Ann providing advance warnings to the guards. He takes matters into his own hands and plans the ultimate breakout involving a helicopter landing in the prison yard.

Despite a reasonably impressive cast, Breakout is a disappointment. Although inspired by true events, the film leaves far too much of its story unexplained. The entire relationship between Jay and Harris Wagner is bungled, with dark and generic mutterings about illegal activities and threats to profits. Indeed, John Huston leaves the impression that he sold his time in exchange for a couple of scenes likely filmed in a single day, and no one could really be bothered to fill in what his character was really doing in the movie.

The mechanics of Jay being framed for murder are also littered with more questions than answers. Basics such as alibi, motive, and witnesses are left to the imagination, with Jay apparently not even able to afford a decent lawyer to punch holes in what appears to be quite the amateur set-up.

The film decamps to the husband and wife team of Bronson and Ireland as Nick and Ann pretending to fight and argue about money and logistics, Nick interested in helping Ann because few women as beautiful as her have ever offered him a second look, while Ann is desperate for Nick's help, his scrappiness more important to her than his lack of sophistication. Ireland's limited range means she can do little that is interesting with Ann, while Bronson is pleasantly animated, the smell of dead fish and engine grease almost jumping off the screen as Nick sweatily tries to impress Ann.

A sullen Robert Duvall is mostly a victim, framed for murder, thrown in with criminals, humiliated by the guards, and powerless to maintain any sort of meaningful relationship with his wife.

Director Tom Gries has a few highlight action scenes to stir up the energy level, but these tend to be more lumpy than smooth, the limited production budget seemingly strained to afford anything other than basic shots and edits. The prison setting, resembling an impressive citadel dominating a mountain, does provide a few dramatic visuals, and Gries does not save on the gore when provided with the opportunity to add some strong pepper with a couple of gruesome deaths.

After the clattering noise of the final escape attempt, the film, true to form, leaves plenty of questions unanswered about what Jay, Ann, Nick and Harris will do next. Breakout is just concerned with the breakout; the context remains locked up.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Cold Sweat (1970)

A botched thriller that sputters in fits and starts, Cold Sweat never gets anywhere. A capable cast is wasted in a mediocre script that rarely convinces, although one prolonged car chase momentarily relieves the tedium.

In the south of France, former American serviceman Joe Moran (Charles Bronson) lives a quiet life running a fishing boat for tourists. Moran has a dark past that he has kept hidden even from his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullman). But his history as an escaped convict from a military prison catches up with him when the men he abandoned during his getaway show up for revenge. Captain Ross (James Mason), Katanga (Jean Topart) and Vermont (Michel Constantin) served a long stint behind bars in Germany after Moran sped off in their escape vehicle, and now they want payback including transportation on Moran's boat to conclude a shady drug deal.

Ross has also arranged for a woman called Moira (Jill Ireland) to be the mule carrying a large amount of money needed for the drug exchange. Moran is able to gain an advantage over Ross by seizing Moira and stashing her in a secluded shack, but in return Ross grabs Fabienne and her young daughter as hostages to force Moran's cooperation. With tensions brewing between Ross and Katanga, the bullets fly as Moran tries to save his family and terminate the evil doers.

The high-revving car chase scene has Moran paradoxically rushing to get a doctor for one of the bad guys who has been shot and is bleeding to death. The bright red Opel Commodore GS gets to flex plenty of muscles screeching its way on (and off) the country roads of southern France, chased by a couple of French motorcycle policemen.

Director Terence Young puts all his James Bond-honed skills into capturing barely contained kinetic energy, but good as the chase is, it too is ultimately bungled. Moran pulls off remarkable stunts to theoretically gain huge advantages in time and space over his pursuers, but no matter what he does, the two motorcycles serenely and effortlessly remain on his tail, undermining credibility.

But Cold Sweat has much deeper problems, including James Mason sporting a ridiculous accent, Jill Ireland gate-crashing the movie primarily because she is the real-life Mrs. Bronson, and an unfathomable stand-off between Ross and Katanga that takes the focus away from Moran and completely disorients the narrative. Three screenwriters could not wrangle a cohesive script out of the Richard Matheson book Ride The Nightmare. The large, unexplained logic gaps include a Turkish drug boat that seems to wait on the open seas for eternity, and some remarkably quick recoveries by bad guys supposedly incapacitated by Moran.

There are some pretty shots of the French countryside, and Young does extract some early tension as Moran's life starts to unravel with the arrival of unwelcome visitors from his past. Charles Bronson does his best to create an engaging central character, and Liv Ullman is several notches above the material, but finally, and sadly, neither can do much to save the movie. Cold Sweat leaves behind an unsightly damp stain.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Hard Times (1975)

The directorial debut of Walter Hill is a period piece set in the Louisiana of the Great Depression, as desperate men engage in bare-knuckled fist fights to earn betting money. Given the subject matter, Hard Times is a surprisingly graceful and engrossing portrait of survival in miserable conditions.

The story is a relatively straightforward updating of the "mysterious stranger with a gun who rides into town" western narrative. Instead of a gun, Chaney (Charles Bronson) has his fists, and they are faster and stronger than any other fighter earning a living on the streets. He arrives on a slow moving train instead of a galloping horse, reveals little about his motives and even less about his background.

The locals are an assortment of low-lifes scratching for a living. Speed Weed (James Coburn) is the gambling-addicted fight promoter who discovers Chaney, and recognizes in him the opportunity to defeat all-comers and earn enough to repay his numerous debts -- except that Speed has the gift of gambling away money faster than even Chaney can earn it.

Poe (Strother Martin) is a medical school drop-out addicted to opium who helps Speed and Chaney, and Lucy (Jill Ireland) is the married woman with a husband in jail desperately looking for a man to be a provider to avoid abject poverty. The rich folks in Hard Times range from brutal loan sharks to cold-hearted business owners.

In short, when times are really tough, it's difficult to find anyone with a charitable soul. Walter Hill's cameras capture the poverty in every corner, from the desolate streets to the depressing eateries and the miserable room with its pathetic furniture that Chaney rents in New Orleans.

Bronson and Coburn play roles that perfectly fit their screen personas. Bronson is just Bronson, a presence more than an actor, speaking much more loudly with actions than words. Coburn is a lot more animated, sweet-talking his way to survival and making up for Bronson by talking too much in all circumstances.

Hard Times is a compact film that maintains its focus on a well-defined tableaux of hardship, and presents it with satisfying colour and texture.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Valachi Papers (1972)

It's not The Godfather, but The Valachi Papers is nevertheless a worthwhile and eye-opening look into the organized criminal underworld. Never one to shy away from a challenge, producer Dino De Laurentiis spotted the success of Francis Coppola's mafia book adaptation and quickly recruited Terence Young, famous as a James Bond director, to create his own mobster epic. Or, as often was the case with De Laurentiis, something close enough.

Based on the true events recounted in the book of the same name by Peter Maas, this is the story of Joseph Valachi (Charles Bronson), who became the first man to betray the mafia and name names to the justice authorities in the United States, in return for protection for him and his family.

Told mostly in flashback, the film traces Valachi's career from the 1930's to the 1960's, as he rose from a small time New York hood to the driver and confidant of some of the Mafia's most notorious bosses of the era, including Salvatore Maranzano (Joseph Wiseman) and Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura). Valachi's role is that of an observer, enforcer, participant and enabler, rather than a plotter, which gives The Valachi Papers more of a street-level, gritty front-line view of organized crime compared to the rarefied air of the Corleones.

There is no shortage of blood and gore as numerous mafia types are gunned down in a hail of bullets for a full two hours. As an added touch, we are treated to one memorable and quite painful castration, prior to the poor victim being gunned down anyway. There is also no shortage of production snafus, not the least of which is the appearance of the ill-fated Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in 1930's New York.

The Valachi Papers features one of Charles Bronson's less stereotypical performances, in a role that sees him more animated that usual, and in the center of the action but, unusually for him, not in control of events. Jill Ireland, in real life Mrs. Bronson, shows up as, well, Mrs. Bronson. The rest of the cast, a mixture of forgettable American character actors and lesser known Italians, stick strictly to one dimension.

Much like its topic, The Valachi Papers is in turns intriguing, engaging, and quite messy.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.