O Grande Assalto

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.

And its a Charles Bronson film! With a pretty good train crash too! I guess Bronson wanted to make a romantic comedy western with his gorgeous wife Jill Ireland and instead of starring in BILLY TWO HATS or THE SPIKES GANG or some other forgotten oater, he went for this. Rather like a BUTCH CASSIDY - CAT BALLOU combo, this small but charming robbery western gets its title from the afternoon liason he spends with Jill inbetween crime appointments. As Bryan Brown said about adultery in BREAKER MORANT: "A slice off a cut loaf is never missed............!" NOON TILL THREE did little business at the time and is never seen now, pity as like alot of small mid 70s films they are well made and still from the days when films were made to entertain, not shock or traumatise.

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.

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

Never have I seen a Bronson flicker as bizarre as this gem. Here we have a outlaw who breezes into the life of a lonely, remote woman on the post civil war outback. Their relationship takes off like a ruptured duck, producing an outcome that only the likes of a taro card reader could predict. I loved the way this story played out as the action led from one stranger than fiction event to another. This led Bronson's character to lose the one thing more valuable to him than all the bank money he had ever desired and his lover to lose even more. This was a top notch Charles Bronson film, well written and played out, possibly the best thing I've seen him in yet. Thumbs up.