I watched this last night, New Year’s Eve. It’s not a Great Film, but it was a good fun watch.
Bronson plays Bishop, a professional hitman. He lives in ridiculous luxury, but is popping pills, clearly not a well man.
The opening sequence is great. About a quarter of an hour with no dialogue at all, just atmosphere and ‘action’, as Bishop goes about his deadly work.
It’s a morally ambivalent film, right from the outset. Bronson’s Bishop is clearly the ‘hero’, albeit in a dark antihero kind of way.
Having killed a seemingly harmless middle-aged man, alone in his homely bedsit, in a squalid part of town, Bishop’s next ‘job’ is a friend of his own (deceased) father.
Harry McKenna (KeenanWynn*) lives in even more ostentatious luxury than Bishop. Much good it’ll do him! He’s fallen foul of his ruthless bosses, and appeals to Bishop for help. Bishop meets with Harry, and as a result meets Steve McKenna, Harry’s wild playboy son.
*(?), from Dr Strangelove.
The stony faced emotionless Bishop’s next job turns out to be McKenna senior. He does his job with his usual meticulous preparation and attention to detail. In a way designed to make it look accidental.
His first victim will, we suppose, be deemed a victim of a domestic gas explosion. McKenna, a heart-attack.
Unaware Bishop killed his father, the younger McKenna stalks/grooms Bishop, with a view to becoming an assassin himself. This whole thread is rather weird, to be honest. Which I’ll come back to in a bit.
After playing cagey for a while, Bishop finally takes Steve under his wing. With disastrous results that unfold over the remainder of the movie.
Their first job as a team goes a bit awry. Let’s say it’s messy, and not according to plan. And whilst there’s only really one ‘mark’, two additional henchman are ‘offed’. Their bodies are dissolved in the acid baths of unwitting accomplices, an auto bodywork workshop.
Bishop is called in, and reprimanded for taking Steve on. He’s given a ‘cowboy’ job – a quick kill – that he doesn’t like (it’s not his usual m.o.), to put things right.
Rather strangely, they take their time and the ‘quick kill’ winds up being more elaborate than any of the others in the film. It’s also a double-cross/set-up. And not only that, Bishop and Steve have both been tasked with killing each other.
All of the above is, frankly, a series of elaborate Mcguffins, allowing the film to traverse a whole range of settings. From the urban squalor of the opening sequence, in L.A., to the luxury of several of the villain’s homes. From motorcycle chases in swanky L.A. to yachts in Italy.
There are also training segments, in which the film manages to shoehorn in some sequences that suggest the film is trying to be an action movie grab bag: assassin stuff, gadgets, martial-arts, etc.
My favourite of the exotic locations is Bishop’s pad. It’s amazing! Rather annoyingly, I can’t find any info’ in the place they used.
The acting is good. Not amazing. The roles, and the way it’s all delivered, are a bit dated/silly. There’s a hipster narcissism about Bishop and Steve, which would be pretty ugly even if they weren’t assassins.
I’ve read that originally Bishop and Steve were meant to be gay lovers. But that thread was dropped, when numerous mooted actors – e.g. George C. Scott – refused the lead role unless the homosexuality was taken out.
The Screenwriter for this film, John Lewis Carlino, called The Mechanic ‘one of the great disappointments of my life’, saying that what he’d written as a complex nuanced story was dumbed down from ‘a real investigation… into a pseudo James Bond film.’
The investigation? According to Carlino ‘a sort of existential statement on the license to kill and what is occurring in our society, how legalized murder is occurring through our institutions.’
Well, yes, there are hints at that. But ultimately this does rather wind up being a dumb, if stylish, celebration of a certain weird vision of what nowadays might be called a toxic masculinity.
The ending is properly bonkers. If also quite predictable. We’re lead to think that maybe these two are genuine buddies – if no longer allowed to actually be lovers! – after all, as they single, er… no, make that double-handedly dole out death to their mafioso overlords.
*Known to many as Stringfellow Hawke, from TV’s Airwolf.
But no, the cocky young Steve fulfils his contract on his former master and teacher, Bishop. Inheriting the Latter’s ridiculously cool pad. But wait… the wily Bishop strikes from beyond the grave! Ka-boom.
By this point, any attempts to explore the moral dimensions this film I doubt touched upon, are list, frankly, in a maelstrom of taciturn testosterone fuelled mayhem.
Despite all this craziness, I really enjoyed this film. It’s no classic. But it is fun. Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent have real screen charisma. Michael Winner is a dab hand at getting an effective balance of mood and action.
