Der Liquidator

One of the most widely hated films with the great late Charles Bronson, "The Evil That Men Do" of 1984 is the nastiest most brutal, and in my opinion one of his better collaborations with director J. Lee Thompson. I haven't seen "The White Buffalo" yet, but their other collaborations include the decent "10 To Midnight", the mediocre "Murphy's Law" and the god-awful "Death Wish 4". Even though far from flawless, "The Evil That Men Do" is another highly entertaining Bronson flick, with a super-tough Bronson, non-stop action and extreme brutality - can one ask for more? Bronson plays Holland, a professional assassin who has retired to a tropic paradise on the Cayman Islands. When an old friend, an oppositional journalist in a South American dictatorship is tortured to death by the English torture specialist 'The Doctor' Clement Molloch (Jospeh Maher), Holland decides to come out of retirement to avenge his friend and free Latin America of its most despicable torturer, The Doctor, who travels from one dictatorship to another in order to fulfill his evil deeds...

Bronson is great and super-tough as always and Joseph Maher makes a particularly evil bad guy. Bronson has had better roles playing a professional assassin - Sergio Sollima's great "Citta Violenta" is just one example. But he nevertheless kicks ass as Holland in this movie, even if it is far away from being one of the masterpieces he has starred in. The only character that annoyed the hell out of me was that of Teresa Saldana, who plays the wife of the friend Holland is out to avenge. On the one hand she wants Bronson to avenge her husband and put an end to the Doctor's evil deeds, but on the other hand she keeps complaining when people get hurt. The violence is omnipresent and bloody, the film begins with a torture scene that is more than a bit nasty. People keep complaining about the lack of character development and plot, and about the violence. I wonder what people some people expect from a mid 80s action flick with Bronson that runs 87 minutes. Citizen Kane? Charles Bronson is one of my favorite actors, and director J. Lee Thompson was doubtlessly talented, which great films like "Cape Fear" (1962) prove. I admit that their collaborations were not exactly masterpieces, but most of them, such as this one, are pure, violent fun made strictly for entertainment purposes. And that is exactly what "The Evil That Men Do" provides: Pure, violent entertainment! Enjoy!

A tense thriller that's not for everyone, but if you're one of those people that just thinks Bronson does Death Wish, check this one from the early 80s out. Bronson doesn't overplay it with explosions and a bad plot - this movie is tight and very believable.

Charles Bronson plays Holland, a man who has retired from his 'professional killer' days and lives at a beautiful island home. Suddenly, Bronson's character is coerced into un-retiring upon hearing about various crimes committed by a sadistic Josef Mengele copycat-killer/torturer named Mulloch (J. Maher). By plotting his vengeance step-by-step, Bronson eliminates Mullochs inner circle in a cold, calculated fashion leading up to the inevitable confrontation at the end of the film. This film to me seems to follow the vigilante-Bronson thread pretty well, his character in this movie seems to reflect previous characters he portrayed in earlier efforts in his career (i.e. The Mechanic and Death Wish). Director J. Lee Thompson's pace throughout the film was enough to keep me interested, Maher's portrayal of the sadistic Mulloch was very eerie and uncomfortable at times, his methods/beliefs of and about torture are pretty gruesome, which greatly impacts how we as the viewer look at him during the film. This is definitely a good installment to the collaborations that J. Lee Thompson and Charles Bronson have had together in film, it isn't the best they've done together but it is well worth a watch if you are a fan of either Thompson's or Bronson's works.

The Evil That Men Do is at once typical and atypical Charles Bronson 1980s fare. On one hand, it contains the grind house trademarks of graphic violence and gratuitous sex that characterized most of Bronson's eighties output. At the same time, it touches on serious political themes that most of his other action films shied away from.

In particular, the film examines the torture being carried out by right wing Latin American regimes during that decade with tacit American support. Unlike most of the right wing vigilante films that Bronson appeared in, this film takes a subtle, if not particularly well explored left wing tack.

The film's violence will not disappoint action or gore fans. The opening torture sequence, reportedly heavily cut, is still quite gruesome. Furthermore, the villains meet some of the nastier deaths in action film history, particularly in the bloody climax. The Columbia / TriStar DVD release renders all this in a beautifully restored print, making it look like it was released yesterday, rather than 26 years ago.

However, one cannot help but wish their had been a more open examination of the political themes that underlie the film, particularly the American involvement in human rights abuses. The film itself begs for a remake, focusing on torture during the War on Terror.

Stumbling upon this 1984 movie by random chance in 2023 and seeing that it starred Charles Bronson, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

I had actually never heard about this movie before, so I didn't know what I was in for here. So writer John Crowther and Fred A. Wyler had every opportunity to entertain me with this movie.

The storyline in "The Evil That Men Do" was entertaining enough for what it turned out to be. It wasn't, however, the best of Charles Bronson movies. And that being said, don't get me wrong, because it definitely is a watchable movie, it just was sort of bland in a way.

The movie does have some familiar faces on the cast list, aside from Charles Bronson himself, with the likes of Joseph Maher, John Glover, Roger Cudney and Joe Seneca.

As it turned out, then I hadn't exactly been missing out on a particularly outstanding Charles Bronson feature here. And now that I have seen it, I doubt that I will actually ever return to watch it a second time, because the storyline just didn't have all that much appeal.

My rating of director J. Lee Thompson's 1984 movie "The Evil That Men Do" lands on a five out of ten stars.