Charles Bronson ruled the box office in the first half of the 1970's, churning out several solid action films a year for United Artists and always finding receptive box office results from his fans.
One of the more unusual of those films is 1974's MR MAJESTYK, with Bronson as a quiet melon farmer named Vince Majestyk.
When a local bunch of rednecks tries to force him to use their local help instead of Majestyk's hand picked crews to harvest his latest crop, he takes the matter into his own hands.
The film does a nice job of setting up a sympathetic character you can root for throughout. The fact that famed novelist Elmore Leonard (Jackie Brown, Out of Sight) is adapting his own novel for the screen certainly helps, as the writing is very strong and unexpectedly good for this type of action flick.
Director Richard Fleischer (Fantastic Voyage, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Soylent Green) brings a sure hand to the visuals and Bronson gives a quiet, solid performance.
Facing off against the local mob, the hit men they hire to take him out AND the time crunch of bringing in those watermelons, Bronson delivers plenty of solid action fun.
Seventies bad guy stalwart Al Letteri (The Getaway) is perfect as hit man Frank Renda, providing lots of fireworks.
The most carnage in the film involves a warehouse full of melons. Bronson is a long way from "Death Wish" here, and yet somehow comfortably in the same revenge-tale wheelhouse.
Quieter and smarter than you might expect, but still delivering solid seventies action, MR MAJESTYK rides the solid pedigree of its creators all the way to a B.
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