O Grande Assalto

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! :-) )

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.

"Some have a life time/Some just a Day..... Nothing's ever forever/ Forever's a lie..." So goes the theme of this excellent and memorable movie. Bronson shows his talent not only as an actor but as a comic. Jill Ireland also exceeds anything she did before or after. Her shock as she realizes Graham is telling the truth is alone worth the price of admission. Perhaps not for Bronson fans but rather for those of us who enjoyed "Cat Ballou", "Support your Local Sheriff/Gunfighter" and 'The Halleluia Trail". Adult comedy westerns come no better than this.

At the height of his stardom, Charles Bronson made this curious oddity. He stars as a bankrobber hiding out at a widow's residence and after a series of comical mishaps, fall in love with one another. This is probably Jill (Bronson's then real life wife) Ireland's best moment. She made a career doing a lot of second stringing in her husband's films but she comes into her own here in a believably sympathetic performance. As for Bronson, well he didn't do a lot of "cute" movies so it's nice to see him in something a little less nasty for a change. Also, he provides some impressive comic relief in his own inimitable, understated way. It is only hampered by some awfully wooden direction. Still, you could do a lot worse.

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.