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Released on: 6/17/2003
Released by: Carlton
Director: John Huston
Cast: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Rod Steiger, Jill Ireland
Year: 1979
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The Movie:
Charles Bronson (Death Wish, Once Upon A Time In The West) plays a detective on the Phoenix police force named Charlie Congers. An infamous New York City Mafioso boss named Joe Bompsosa (Rod Steiger of A Fistful Of Dynamite) has recently been taken into custody and the police need Congers to go off to Switzerland and escort his mistress, Jackie Pruitt (played by Bronson's wife and regular co-star, Jill Ireland) back to the United States so that she can testify against him in court.
At the insistence of his fellow mobsters, Bomposa decides to take out a hit on Pruitt and have her assassinated before she can get out of Switzerland alive and send him to prison. She simply knows too much for her own good. In order to make this happen, Bomposa hires a cold-blooded Italian hit man named Vittorio Farroni (played by the always amusing Henry Silva of The Hills Run Red).
Eventually, Congers realizes what's going on and that their lives are in danger and it's up to him and Pruitt to get out of Switzerland is quickly and quietly as possible with their lives intact. With Farroni and a few others on their trail though, that's going to be much easier said than done.
Filmed towards the end of the best years of Bronson's career, Love And Bullets manages to be a reasonably decent movie in spite of itself. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (of Cool Hand Luke and The Amityville Horror), the film may very well have been an excuse for the cast and crew to head off to Switzerland, all expense paid. It's a rather predictable and uninspired film that doesn't really attempt anything new with what it has to work with.
That being said, Bronson and Silva are always fun to watch and putting them in the same movie together can never be a bad thing, even if they don't share nearly enough screentime. You'd think that Wendell Mayes (who also penned Death Wish and The Poseidon Adventure) would have had the good sense to have Silva and Bronson scowl at each other a bit more, just to keep things interesting but instead we're treated to a lot of footage of Bronson's character riding the train and Silva is just barely used at all.
Jill Ireland, who I admit, I am not a big fan of, does a pretty good job as the damsel in distress and Steiger is solid and believable as the Mafia drug kingpin who finds himself in some seriously hot water.
The scenery and cinematography is nice and captures a lot of very pretty scenery and locations quite nicely with some graceful sweeping camera movements and a few long tracking shots that work well. The action set pieces are also handled nicely though there aren't nearly enough of them. When they occur, they give the movie a much-needed shot of adrenaline but when they're not and the movie heads farther from Bullets and closer to Love, it tends to drift a little to the dull side.
Overall though, there is enough to like about the movie that it's certainly worth a look, especially for Bronson fans. He's his always-dependable self in this one, even if he's not treading any new ground. I can't think of an actor who better defined the strong, silent type than Bronson did, and he does it with ease in Love And Bullets.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The widescreen picture on this DVD is actually very nice. Print damage is minimal at best and there aren't any compression problems worth speaking of. Colors look nice and vibrant and the print used for this transfer is quite clean and crisp with a nice high level of detail. Skin tones are reproduced faithfully and blacks remain quite deep and solid throughout the running time. There is a slight bit of mild edge enhancement most noticeable during some of the brighter outdoor scenes, specifically where snow is involved, but other than that, this is a solid effort.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 track is of average quality. There's a small amount of hiss in a few scenes and a little bit of the dialogue sounds rather canned in a few spots but overall it's pretty clear and it's easy enough to follow along.
Extras? This disc is barebones.
The Final Word:
For a bargain priced disc, Love And Bullets fares quite well despite the lack of any actual extra features. The movie holds up well enough and it looks great and sounds decent. For PAL capable Bronson fans, it's well worth the low asking price.