ITC/Grade. Director Stuart Rosenberg; Producer Pancho Kohner; Screenplay Wendell Mayes, John Melson; Camera Fred Koenekamp, Anthony Richmond; Editor Michael Anderson; Music Lalo Schifrin; Art Director John DeCuir
Charles Bronson
Rod Steiger
Jill Ireland
Strother Martin
Bradford Dillman
Michael Gazzo
Slowly and predictably, script plots Charles Bronson's mission, on behalf of the FBI, to pick up a mobster's moll (Jill Ireland) who's got separated from her paramour and is presumed to be a mine of incriminating information.
Bronson's personal obsession with bringing down the gangland king is accentuated when he discovers the girl knows nothing after all, and then falls for her. When the mob, equally Convinced she'll shop them, have her killed, he takes private revenge.
Rod Steiger's performance as the effete Mafia boss is tantalizing. So too is the emergent love affair between Bronson and Ireland, her comic talent largely starved for lack of material.
Director Stuart Rosenberg could have glossed over the plot's less believable twists with a brisker style and a lot more attack.
(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1979. Running time: 95 MIN.
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