Country: United States
Genre: Action
Director: Michael Winner
Year: 1973
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
Sometimes flicks you remember fondly haven’t aged all that well. That’s certainly the case with The Stone Killer.
It seems like Vietnam veterans in prison on petty charges are getting assassinated by hired guns. The brass want to blame it on fashionable targets (for the time) like the Black Panthers, but Detective Lou Torrey (Charles Bronson) suspects there’s something more going on.
Screenwriter Gerald Wilson (adapting A Complete State of Death by John Gardner) let’s the cat out of the bag pretty early, so I will, too. It seems that mobster Al Vescari (Martin Balsam) is planning to avenge a massacre of Sicilian mob Mustache Petes back in 1931, and he’s hiring hitman outside of the mob to do it. Will Torrey find out in time to stop it?
This is not exactly an edge of your seat question. Who cares if a bunch of mobsters bump each other off? Neither does director Michael Winner. Really, the plot is just an excuse for some bloodshed. By today’s standards, it’s pretty tame, but there is one fun scene.
A roomful of mobsters is machine-gunned, and for the grand finale, one of them falls out of the window of a 20-story building. Back in those days, the dummies they used were usually pretty pathetic, but not here. Winner films the body flailing all the way from the window to the concrete, where it bounces slightly before coming to rest. Too bad he didn’t add some blood packet splatter, but you can’t have everything.
The plot follows Torres as he puts the pieces together, with the occasional killing to spice things up. It’s pretty thin gruel. The mystery is put together fairly sloppily, and the characters are nothing to write home about. There’s a car chase halfway through which is no better or worse than the standard from the era.
Some of the acting seems pretty awful, but I bet that 30 years from now, the acting from today’s B pictures will seem rancid, too.
Surprisingly, Charles Bronson’s performance holds up pretty well. He’s sorta kinda believable as a guy with nerves of steel. He doesn’t have the imagination to visualize himself on a slab, so he takes big risks with his life. He’s a blue collar stiff who goes at his job aggressively, just because it’s his job and it wouldn’t occur to him to slack off.
For folks who grew up in the 70s, The Stone Killer is kind of a fun trip down memory lane. It’s broad, but you get some of the flavor of New York from the 70s and of the rest of the country as well. The screenplay dutifully trots out psychotic Vietnam Vets, Black Panthers, racial tensions, and the counter culture, in the form of an Ashram in California, which is mostly played for laughs. But really it’s paper thin, all of it.
The filmmakers also try to put a topical spin on the film in the epilogue by having Bronson give a speech about rising crime rates, but frankly it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
Anybody who isn’t an old fart like me will find their eyes glazing over with boredom.
Some of you might question my giving The Stone Killer even 2 1/2 stars, and you’re probably right. What can I tell you? I’m a sentimental guy.
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