The Mechanic (1972).

Review #1267: The Mechanic.

Cast: 
Charles Bronson (Arthur Bishop), Jan-Michael Vincent (Steve McKenna), Keenan Wynn (Harry McKenna), Jill Ireland (The Girl), Linda Ridgeway (Louise), Frank de Kova (The Man), and Takayuki Kubota (Yamoto) Directed by Michael Winner.

Review: 
Sometimes you need a good thrill. If there is enough action and interesting moments, you have a sure winner on your hands. Too bad this is a film that can't quite push itself to being a complete success. The teaming up of an seasoned veteran and a brash willing newcomer is a familiar one if you watch enough movies, so the real game is in the execution. The original script by Lewis John Carlino implicitly had the main two actors have a relationship. However, it became difficult to find a lead actor or financing for the film, with one notable rejection coming from George C. Scott. Carlino expressed disappointment with having to change the script, stating "I wanted a commentary on the use of human relationships and sexual manipulation in the lives of two hired killers. It was supposed to be a chess game between the older assassin and his young apprentice. The younger man sees that he can use his sexuality to find the Achilles heel that he needs to win." Honestly, if you did this with a man and woman, nobody would've objected. But this was 1972, so c'est la vie. The resulting film does tend to seem like a James Bond film at times (as reflected on by Carlino), with the dynamic between Bronson and Vincent seeming neutered to look like a father-son dynamic instead. I do wonder if the sequence with Ireland doing a girlfriend experience for Bronson was there originally, since it doesn't really seem to matter to the actual plot in the long run. Actually the whole film seems like a scattershot experience, having a plot that never completely gels to anything meaningful. It isn't tense enough nor diverting enough, with the only notable sequence being an opening that is without dialogue for sixteen minutes (in an elaborate death sequence), which goes off fine I suppose. This is a film where our main assassin is a loner who likes classical music, squeezes a ball on occasion, and  someone racked with anxiety and depression. In that sense, Bronson is okay with the role. He has a fine rugged charm that rolls with action without too many smirks or outbursts. Vincent seems to need something more to this role, where he only seems there to give a quip and bare moments of actual brash confidence. It should be a cat-and-mouse game, but it seems more of two cats clawing lazily at cardboard that looks like cheese. The other actors have little presence either, with Wynn leading out the scene count with two (all in the first half, naturally). What's the point of making an action thriller if there isn't an interesting hero or villain? Even with the re-writes, you could still have had an okay movie if provided a real sense of stakes. The best this film has to offer is a swift ending involving the main characters before its 100 minutes are up, which is actually pretty amusing. As one can expect from mining the depths of films to revitalize for "new audiences", this film has had a remake, released in 2011 starring Jason Statham and its own sequel five years later in Mechanic: Resurrection (creative title, for the 1990s). On the whole, this is just a very okay action film that seems a bit too fixed-up in the wrong places to really generate the right kind of entertainment. It has some explosions, moments of gritting teeth, but not much else.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.