Directed by Richard Fleischer
Written by Elmore Leonard
Starring Charles Bronson, Al Lettieri, Linda Cristal, and Lee Purcell
Running Time: 1 hour and 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG (?!)

by Iran Hrabe, Staff Writer

Kino Lorber continues to do the Lord’s work by giving hidden gems a second life with new transfers and new Blu-Ray releases. Not only does this new 2K transfer of this Charles Bronson flick look great, but its release is a great excuse to take a look at this surprisingly unique movie. Boasting a screenplay by mystery novelist Elmore Leonard, Mr. Majestyk tells the tale of a man who just wants to harvest some damn watermelons. Bronson plays the titular Mr. Majestyk, a melon farmer who runs afoul of the local backwoods mob and a bloodthirsty hitman who impede his melon harvest at every turn. It sounds like a goof, but I’m not kidding when I say that Majestyk’s main drive throughout the film is to harvest those melons come hell or high water. If you know anything about the types of tough guy characters Charles Bronson portrayed, you know it was a mistake for these ruffians to come between this man and his melons, and the road to their comeuppance is laced with car chases, shootouts, and a truly cruel and unusual treatment of a warehouse full of watermelons.

Mr. Majestyk isn’t some sort of all-time great, but man is it fun if you’re in the mood to watch Charles Bronson at his absolute peak. Released the same year as the first Death Wish (1974), Bronson was never going to win any Oscars with his wooden line reading, but his presence is undeniable. Al Lettieri (The Godfather) provides an excellent foil to Bronson’s Majestyk in the hitman Frank Renda. Though the reasoning for Renda’s dogged pursuit of assassinating Majestyk is convoluted at best and totally nonsensical at worst, this is a mid-70s action flick so none of that really matters. What matters is Lettieri has mobster gravitas and wild eyes that sell the part, and it’s a damn shame he died of a heart attack a year after this film was released because his unhinged energy does a lot of this movie’s heavy lifting.

Honestly, that’s pretty much it. There’s not a lot to this movie and that’s one of the reasons why it works so well. It’s one of those movies that makes you realize that the old saw “less is more” is true more often than it’s not. There’s no overthinking here. Honestly, with the way they set up the Majestyk vs. Psychotic Hitman plot, you could argue that there isn’t any thinking period. Yet despite the surprisingly inelegant setup in the script from someone considered a literary master of the mystery/thriller genre (Elmore Leonard’s works have been adapted into films like Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, Get Shorty, and the TV series Justified to name a few), this movie knows what it is and doesn’t make any bones about it. It’s an ordinary-man-pressed-into-vigilantism flick that feels like a perfect double feature for Death Wish. Sure Bronson isn’t any sort of great actor, but he has something that you learn at Julliard that led him from the coal mines of central Pennsylvania to five decades of tough guy work in Hollywood.