Leofwine_draca You don't get a more typical police film than THE STONE KILLER, but nonetheless I found myself really enjoying this early Charles Bronson outing – and it may well be one of his most solid efforts. It's equally as enjoyable as the later Winner/Bronson collaboration DEATH WISH, and infinitely more entertaining than the ultra-slow CHATO'S LAND. The key to this film's success is the script, set soundly in the early, racist '70s and providing plenty of meat and pithy one-liners amid the usual mayhem.The plot, about Bronson's cop becoming involved in a feud between two mafia families, is nothing new. The execution is fairly routine, but every aspect of the film screams hard-ass, and I was never disappointed. Bronson, who might well be the titular character for all the expressions he cracks, is excellent, and watching him partake in shoot-outs, car chases, or just beating the hell out of a suspect in custody is a lot of fun.He's got a range of enemies here, from slimy street hustlers (Paul Koslo has a memorable turn) to vengeful, ageing mob bosses (Martin Balsam, although the two never actually meet). There's a snappy car chase about halfway too, lots of scenes of our hero taking out enemies from on high with a single shot, bodies that fall several stories before hiding the tarmac (no cutting away here, oh no) and an exciting set-piece climax in which a kill squad set about erasing a crime family from the pages of history. Winner's direction is a lot more focused than usual in his career, and the streets are alive with bullets, bad suits, and bloodshed. A tough as nails movie.

bkoganbing The Stone Killer finds Charles Bronson as a New York detective exiled to Los Angeles after a controversial shooting. While in Los Angeles Bronson discovers bit by bit a massive assassination plot of organized crime bosses. His biggest task is to convince his superiors to keep probing into this.Martin Balsam is a purist and a Sicilian. 42 years after the famous feud in gangland lore the Castellammarese War he wants to get back at the guys who infiltrated the Mafia. Guys like Luciano and Costello who brought in all kinds of outsiders like Jews into organized crime. A few years earlier in the Kirk Douglas film The Brotherhood he got recruited to avenge the death of his father in that same war by getting a betrayer. Sicilians have long memories, don't forget, and hold grudges. In fact right around this time Joey Gallo was killed and among his sins was bringing in, heaven forfend, blacks into his family as associates.Balsam is putting this all together for April 10, the anniversary of the last shootings with the help of Stuart Margolin recruiting a lot of disgruntled Vietnam veterans who've learned the trade. Sad to say this was another of those films in the Seventies where everyone who served in Vietnam was labeled a psychotic killer.There's enough action here to satisfy any Bronson fan including a slam bang shootout with the NYPD and Balsam's picked crew. I will say that there certainly will be a leadership vacuum to contend with.

kuciak First the film has a great poster. The beginning is good, and the end is interesting. But in the middle the film is very uninvolving. The film also does not seem to know what it wants to be. Does it want to be Dirty Harry, does it want to be The French Connection, or does it want to be The Godfather. The one character actor who really I think is the most interesting of all is the Mafia boss played by Martin Balsam. Watching him, one has to think that he would have been interesting Playing Don Corleone in the Godfather, or even the Fernando Rey character in French Connection I and II.As the poster says, ;This cop plays dirty', but sadly, for the rest of the movie, Torrey is a bore. I wonder how the character of Torrey in the John Gardner stories, was, their were apparently two of them, and who knows, maybe if this film had been both a critical and financial success, the character. like Dirty Harry would have continued. Dirty Harry success lies in not only that we had a great villain, a different kind of law enforcement officer than previous films had shown, but we got to know Harry throughout the movie. We really don't get to know who Torrey is, why he is the way he is. I am a big Bronson fan, but here in Stone Killer, I think we get to see the indifference that Bronson would show in some of his later efforts. Previously Winner and Bronson had teamed to make one of his most interesting characters, that of Bishop in the Mechanic, which is I think their best collaboration.I think the people involved in this film missed a great opportunity in making a movie that could have focused on the idea of using Viet Nam Vets to be used as a hit squad, which was original. With the unpopular war winding down, it could have asked, what next, as thousands would return, and to what opportunities for them.I'm sure that Winner and De Laurentis realized that this film wasn't very good, but went on to release it realizing that in Europe the film would do well as Bronson was a huge star their, though not yet in the US.Burt Reynolds once said that they should remake films that were not very good when first released. Watching the Stone Killer, I think would be interesting to remake, with the same time period and local. With the Viet Nam angle, it would possibly make people wonder about what will happen when our veterans return from Iraq and Aphganistan and Iraq.

Enforcer686 You either get Old Stone Face or you don't. I get him. He played virtually the same type of character in every movie from the '70s forward, although his character's profession changed from time to time. Didn't matter if he was an unflinching streetwise cop that walks outside the law to bring justice, an architect, or an amazingly tough journalist that can beat up bad guys as easily as normal people breath air (how often do you see that?), he was always a character that looked out for what was right, the law be damned. And no mamby pamby metrosexual stuff anywhere in sight.....This movie was interesting to me in that it was filmed during the prime of the '70s Cop Movie glory days and also happened to be part of the golden age for Bronson himself. I dig the terrible period clothing, hair and lingo. I also dig the neo-psychedelic soundtrack. It was rather amusing seeing Bronson amongst the young hippie burnouts at a wacked out party when he was searching for clues, talk about a fish out of water! And even way back then, the ever popular grouchy old Italian mobster stereotype was in full play, although this was one of the first Bronson films to do this (and it often resurfaced in his movies, even in Death Wish 4 decades later). It also featured several familiar faces including "Mr. Roper" of Three's Company as a cop(!) and "Jack Tripper" of the same show as a bumbling, inept rookie cop. Those with either sharp memories or an extensive Twilight Zone collection will recognize Mob Boss Vescari as the star of the much loved wax figures episode (New Exhibit).You're not going to see Oscar type performances in a Bronson film, but then again, that's not what they were shooting for. You do get a glimpse of a great period of gritty American cop films. They didn't have the internet to help them. No GPS. No Google maps. Just coffee, steel revolvers, typewriters and good old fashioned investigational work, and of course real cars that were driven to death by stunt men, not computer generated crashes. And you do get politically incorrect, 150 proof MANDOM of the kind that isn't made any more. And that makes for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon in my book.