From Noon Till Three

If you seek killer Bronson, he isn't home. But if you are willing to watch Bronson doing lighter work and be on screen with his wife in a mildly funny satire, enjoy. From first meeting to keeper of the legend, this is a Jill Ireland vehicle. It satirizes Bronson's previous work which grew out of the dime novel creation of the American West. We watch the Bronson character lose control of his real life because a widow creates a better outlaw than he was. Enjoy this for the satire on every level including the score and the songs.

It is a refreshing change of pace compared to the blood beast Bronson had to feed in many action movies. Now that it is being broadcast, watch it with the idea that Bill Hickok and Bill Cody played on stage for money and that dime novelist Ned Buntline gave out those Buntline specials to the men he wrote about. I suspect most of you will at least chuckle at the world caught up in the legend of a third rate bank robber ensnared by a woman he seduced. And the end is better satire than real life Emmett Dalton going to Hollywood to help make movies about the Dalton gang robbing Coffeyville. For an adult audience, this is far better entertainment than Over the Hill Gang slapstick. Give it a try.

From Noon Till Three (1976)

*** (out of 4)

Extremely delighting romantic comedy with Charles Bronson playing a bank robber who can't go on the latest heist and instead stays back at a house with a beautiful woman (Jill Ireland). The two spend three romantic hours together but after she thinks he's been killed, she decides to write a story about those three hours, which turns him into a legend but when he returns there's going to be trouble as he wants to be himself and not the legend. When you mention Charles Bronson you can have a great number of films to discuss. I have discussed the films of Bronson with many people but when I mention this film here everyone goes quiet as not many have heard of it and even fewer have actually seen it, which is a real shame because this is certainly one of his best. It's not common for Bronson to take part in what's basically a romantic comedy but he and Ireland really work wonderfully well together and this is clearly their best film together. It really seems like neither one is giving an actual "performance" but instead they're just being themselves because both come off so natural. Just take a look at the scene where they're swimming together as the perfect example. Perhaps they are just acting but this sequence feels so real that you can't help but feel they're just playing around and showing their real love for one another. The first seventy-five minutes of this movie are so refreshing, funny and charming because we're seeing Bronson playing a character unlike anything he had played before or since. I found him to be incredibly charming here and it's just great fun for a fan to see him flirting, picking flowers and actually smiling. Ireland, never accused of being a great actress, actually does a very good job here and is quite believable in her role. I think the final act with the "truth vs. legend" doesn't work as well as I'm sure everyone was hoping for but you have to give the filmmakers a lot of credit for the ending that I won't ruin here. The film actually says a lot about fame, believing lies that you might read and various other things but in the end the real jewel is seeing Bronson playing a role that he never really got to again, which is a shame considering how great he is here.

Charm is not a word you would associate Charles Bronson with, but he is chock full if it in this "romp." A group of bank robbers leave Charles Bronson at a widow's (Jill Ireland's) house because his horse goes lame. They vow to pick him up after the robbery in what they figure will be about three hours (thus the name of the movie). In those three hours Charles Bronson, after almost attacking Jill Ireland, decides to go for a sympathy play and has Jill Ireland, within 15 minutes making love to him to help him with his "impotency." While watching the movie, it makes you wonder how she held off for so long. If you want to see Charles Bronson half naked, with a physique of a man 20 years younger, making love - three times -- this is the movie for you. After he leaves, and is mistakenly thought killed, Jill Ireland writes a book about their three hour affair and the whole thing turns into a type of legend, which turns the town into a type of World's Fair exhibit. Charles Bronson ends up in jail for different reasons where he finds out that he has become a legend and of course ties to tell people that's he's that person, and if things weren't already crazy they get crazier. Charles Bronson is unrecognizable from the characters he played in practically all of his other movies. This movie shows his range as an actor and makes me sad he never got to display more of what he was actually capable of. Jill Ireland pulls off her character beautifully and also shows her range, something else we never got to see in her other movies. After thinking about the movie, I know why they did it. If you are channel surfing and see it, by all means watch it. I'm looking for it on DVD now. I want to buy it.

This modest little gem is a humorous, funny, melancholic movie about what you can encounter if you fall in love with a romantic woman - you can end up bigger than life, and that can get you into serious trouble! Bronson - far from his usual he-man cliché roles - delivers a very nice, humorous performance; and so does Jill Ireland. Just watch it, even if you are far from being a Bronson fan - this droll flick is enjoyable for everyone!

To tell you more, and make you understand, one cannot avoid spoilers; so here's the plot:

***** SPOILERS *****************************

Graham Dorsey (Bronson) is a member of a gang which is on their way to rob a bank. Being frightened of the job, he takes the chance to stay in a house by the road until his buddies come back from the job.

The lady of the house, Amanda (Ireland), a young, attractive widow, is alone in the house. Graham manages to get her to bed with him. They fall for each other (he pretends to be somewhat more noble than he really is), and share some hours of love and bliss - until a posse comes to catch him (the robbery had failed). He tries to flee (telling Amanda he goes to free his accomplices). But he ends up in jail, sentenced for another man's frauds, while the other man is erroneously shot in his place. So Amanda gets word that Graham is dead.

Amanda, formerly an honorable widow, now looked upon as a bandit's mistress, is alone in her grief. She writes a book about the story; but Graham having overstated, and Amanda having a strong tendency to romanticize and idealize her feelings, she describes the whole story much bigger than life. The book becomes a best-seller; not only locally, but all over the world. The tale gets a huge hype.

So when Graham is free again after a year in jail, and comes back into town (in disguise) for Amanda, he finds, to his surprise and growing amusement, some sort of "Graham Dorsey Disneyland" at the place, built around the book's tale. And Amanda's house has turned into a GD museum, visited by loads of tourists guided by Amanda who tells them "her story". He, too, enters, asking for a tour. He gets it; Amanda does not recognize him - not even when he takes his masquerade off: she simply does not believe him - she believes her book, and in her book, he is bigger, more beautiful, and better in any respect! (very funny scene)

Finally, he succeeds to make her believe him. But to his big surprise, Amanda does not want the real GD - she prefers to live for the legend! She tells him that formerly, it was a matter of just the two of them; but now it has become a matter of the feelings of all the world, which she would not hurt by destroying the myth. Even when he tries to apply force, she just steals his gun and demands that he leaves forever. He refuses. When she sees no more way to change his mind, she even shoots herself before his eyes.

On his following lonely odyssey, he meets the Graham & Amanda hype everywhere, ad nauseam: and whenever he gets up to protest against the lies, saying that HE is GD, he is laughed at, shouted down, or even threatened for his "fraud". Irony of fate: it is only in the end, when he is put in an asylum for his "lunacy", among the lunatics, that Graham finds people who believe him and accept him, and finds his peace of mind.

*********** END OF SPOILERS *******************

So this movie, though playing in a western milieu, is at its core a story of the fate of an unusual love. It is very unpretentious (far away from roaring schmaltz like "Gone with the wind" or "Titanic"; lightyears away from that big-mouthed, stylish soulless crap that we have to endure since the eighties), just a humble, bittersweet little (tragi)comedy with moments of the grotesque, about life's pleasures and grief, about becoming a culprit and becoming a victim; about the value and the cost of idealizing and true life. If it wouldn't be for Bronson and Ireland starring, you might call it a B-film. But Charles Bronson - surely not being the king of actors - delivers a very nice, humorous performance here in a very unbronsonesque role, together with his excelling real life wife Jill Ireland. It's a pity that the direction is wooden sometimes. And, fitting superbly to its old-fashioned style, the movie has a nice catchy melancholic little waltz as a theme song ("Hello and Goodbye"/Elmer Bernstein/Alan and Marilyn Bergman, sung by Ireland), dealing with the elusiveness of love.

Give it a chance! You will come out of it thoughtful, I guess; and about how many Hollywood films can you say that?

Valuation: I would spontaneously give it a good 7 out of 10 - but I spontaneously tend to judge relating to an IMDb average valuation of below 5, as it should be; but the actual average being near 7, it should get an 8 (though this is unfair to the comedy masterpieces like Lubitsch's "To be or not to be", or Chaplin's "Modern times"; or Tati's "Jour de fête" - those should have at least a 12, then! :-) )

After spending 3 unforgettable hours with an outlaw called Graham Dorsey, Charles Bronson, whose band commits a bank hold-up thwarted by villagers , a beautiful young widow, Jill Ireland, turns her love story - Romeo and Juliet alike- into a worldwide notorious book with several prints and she builds the mediocre Graham Dorsey into a western hero. As the town celebrates :Welcome to Gladstone City where Buck Bowers gang met their end and the romance of Graham and Amanda began. As the noisy city receives a lot of tourists and visitors and showing : Starbuck Mansion tour twice daily , 3 dummies with a poster captioning : where they were hung. And to see Graham Dorsey's grave: he valued friendship more than life , sleep gently sweet prince.

This is a change of pace character for Bronson in a spoof of western legend . Strange is certainly the word for this comedy action fantasy romance tale . The plot is plain and simple as Bronson has a brief romance with his real wife Jill Ireland who , believing him dead, fictionalizes their lives in a series of succssesful books, when he turns alive, no one, including Jill believes that he is the actual Dorsey and he is gradually driven crazy. No sypnosis could convey the flavour of a movie that almost creates its own genre and even might have done so with other classic Hollywood actors . Bronson gives an acceptable acting as the two-fisted gunslinger , though Charles adventure buffs may well not know what to make of this one . This is one of a number of westerns that Bronson played during the mid, late 60s and early seventies, as the famous Once upon a time the west by Sergio Leone, Red sun by Terence Young , Chato by Michael Winner , Nevada Express by Tom Gries , Valdez by John Sturges and White Buffalo by JL Thompson. And being finely acompanied by Jill Ireland who is nice as the gorgeous and sympathetic widow. Supporting cast is good with brief interpretations from Douglas Fowley, Don Red Barry, Elmer Bernstein himself and Anne Ramsey.

Enjoyable and sensitive musical scoreby the classy maestro Elmer Bernstein. Adequate and appropriate production design by Robert Clatworthy, an expert designer who worked in Psycho, Ship of fools, Touch of evil, Guess who is coming to dinner, The incredible shrinking man, The parent trap, among others. The motion picture was weak but professionally directed by Frank D Gilroy. He was a craftsman who wrote and directed a few films such as The gig, Jinxed, Once in Paris, Desperate characters, The subject was roses , The gallant hours and Fastest gun alive. Rating :acceptable and passable 6/10