THE MECHANIC is the best of the 6 movies that Charles Bronson made with director Michael Winner. They were filmed between 1972 and 1985. It was the second film made right after CHATO’S LAND and just before THE STONE KILLER (1973). The notorious and wildly successful DEATH WISH (it spawned two sequels) would follow a year later. Bronson was always a man of few words (in CHATO he has one line of dialogue) and that is used to good advantage here. He doesn’t say a lot but when he does, it’s important. He plays the title character. Arthur Bishop is not a car repairman but a professional hit man who works for a secret organization that plays by a specific set of rules.
One of the things that makes the movie so fascinating is that it opens with a 16 minute stretch in which there is no dialogue just music and visuals like a modern day silent film. In that 16 minutes we are introduced to the unbelievably meticulous plans that Bishop creates in order to carry out a hit. We then get to witness those plans put into action resulting in making his target’s death look like an accident. The rest of the movie is a series of peaks and valleys. Fortunately the peaks outnumber the valleys so that in the final analysis, THE MECHANIC is a movie worth revisiting even if you’re not a Bronson fan. In fact, it’s better the second time around. It is also a nifty time capsule of the early 1970s.
After the opening hit, Bishop is then ordered to take out a family friend. Once this is done, he becomes interested in the friend’s son (Jan-Michael Vincent) who has no knowledge of his father’s murder. Bishop then decides to make the young man his assistant and train him to be a professional killer. This does not set well with the organization Bishop works for and after the two muddle a murder contract, they are sent to Milan to do an immediate hit but run into a setup planned by the organization because Bronson broke the rules by training Vincent without asking. After evading and then eliminating their pursuers in an extended chase scene, they return to Milan where a couple of surprises await them.
The flaws include a questionable scene where Vincent’s girlfriend attempts suicide and an extended motorcycle chase which could have been omitted altogether. Blame the screenplay for the former and director Michael Winner for the latter. Still there are several good scenes including one with Jill Ireland (Bronson’s real life wife) as a call girl, Bronson’s meeting with the head of the organization (Frank de Kova), the mountain road chase sequence, and a delicious final twist. The overall direction is slick and the performances interesting making THE MECHANIC a 1970s film noir in tone if not in looks. It was remade in 2011 with Jason Statham and Ben Foster but this version has more to offer.
The Capsule Critic 