And who better to spew bullet ridden bodies across the screen with such gleeful abandon but the then powerhouse team of the impassively stone-faced Charles Bronson and his prolific go-to director Michael Winner.
Winner's reputation for maximum efficiency accounted for his ability to pump out a film every year....no wonder the studios couldn't wait to give him work. And there's not a wasted minute or moment in the blood soaked 95 minutes of "The Stone Killer".
Fair warning to millennials and the subsequent young gens.....like all 70's cop movies, it's steeped in systemic racism, so try not to clutch your pearls, fanning yourself as you hear those toxic words flying about in the dialogue. Remember, my children, this occured long, long before the days of political correctness and woke-ism.....
But let's head right for the fun stuff.....primarily from watching Charles Bronson cut a swath of corpses on both sides of the U.S.A. (Fired from the NYPD for being too free with his bullets, Charlie heads right over to L.A., where an equal amount of scumbags need immediate terminal Bronson-izing
And what a perfect case he stumbled on to.....a small army of Vietnam vets turned commando assassins for hire. They've been assembled by mafia boss Viscari (Martin Balsam) to wipe out mob's Sicilian contingent in revenge for a similar wipeout perpetrated by the Sicilians in 1939. Some long memory this guy's got.....
Before figuring all this out, Bronson has to work his way through the food chain of lower echelon scumsuckers, one body at a time........ including some shlub who's smashed through a building. assisted by the front grille of the speedy Charlie-mobile.
Finally, we arrive at what we came to salivate over in any Bronson film.....the climactic carnival of carnage where Charlie and the cops engage the freelance death squad......but only after the squad's already used their automatic weapons to turn the Sicilian confab into rare hamburger meat. (Let's hear it for the poor capo who's perforated enough to send him flying out a window to die screaming til he hits the pavement. That's some bad day this guy having.....)
Grisly good pulp all the way, made even more fun by Winner, as always, populating his cast with so many. instantly recognizable character actors Special standouts......Stuart Margolin as the almost comically intense leader of the Vietnam squad and Ralph Waite (of "The Walton") as an idiot detective who's so stupid Bronson wouldn't waste a bullet on him.
Speaking of major cities afflicted with high crime, only a year later Bronson and Winner would nail the country's prevailing 'mad-as-hell' atmosphere with unerring precision.....in their startling, controversial vigilante bleeder, "Death Wish". And that one ushered in a whole new sub-genre all its own......with a host of fed-up heroes taking the law into their own handguns......
As for "The Stone Killer", in a few brief moments it allows Bronson to muse over the sorry state of things.....the stark legacy of young Vietnam war vets returning home broken and angry along with the tsunamic of crime overwhelming society in general.
Not to worry, action fans, trust Bronson and Winner to never let any philosophizing slow down the firefights and the crimson rivers.....3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2),
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