Chasse à mort

Charles Bronson is an ex-patriot of the United States who travels to the Yukon to escape his past. He gets on the bad side of a group of trappers, kills one of them in self-defense, and is wrongfully accused of murder. Lee Marvin as a veteran Mountie, Carl Weathers, and fresh from training Mountie Andrew Stevens set out to track Bronson down as he tries to escape into Alaska.

The acting in this film is sensational, the settings are true to life, and the story is riveting. A must see!

Here is a story set in Canada about Canadians and yet it was made by the US. I have to ponder why Canada didn't jump on doing this story themselves. If one wonders why Canadian movies are so lame (about failure, disease, depression, weird humor) I would say it is because culturally we have an aversion to examining ourselves in a critical fashion whereas other countries do it quite naturally. England has made films about notorious murders, same with Australia, or Germany (Tenderness of the Wolves), and of course, the US. This story would have been perfect material for a domestic movie--but I can find no evidence that Canada ever sought to make this story themselves. I can understand with the stars involved that they dramatized it and changed the facts, but if it were done with no stars, and kept to the historical story, it still would have been fascinating. But the government film funding bodies don't like stories that present Canada in a negative light. At least in the English side-I know Quebec has covered stories on its history in fictional fashion. I remember the furor over a Canadian murder case when a Canadian producer wanted to make a film about it and was harshly condemned, so the US made it-and Canadian crew people vowed not to work on it. This is seriously screwed up thinking. If Canada wants to develop a normal film industry it needs to be less reserved and more self-examining.... On the film itself, I agree with the sentiments that you wouldn't see this film made today-and if you did, it would star model-types. Character actors have really gone extinct. Some of the melodramatic touches in the film worked for me (the dog, the trapper Bill), others fell flat(the inserted love story). Still, Bronson was effective (you could totally believe he was a rugged mountain man) and Marvin had some good lines (I am sure Canadian government culture ministers would have axed his comment calling the trappers "savages" if it was made in country).

This is an almost forgotten film, a status which is undeserved. Loosely based on a true story, it is the tale of a lone, mysterious trapper who irks some thugs in the Canadian wilderness, leading to a massive manhunt by the Mounties. Bronson (virtually silent throughout and thus quite effective) is a resourceful target, at once gentle and violent. Marvin is the grizzled head of the mounted police who has the task of tracking down and capturing a man with whom he can identify. Their unspoken understanding is fascinating to see. Marvin is aided by a wet-behind-the-ears, by-the-book officer played by Stevens. It would be hard to imagine a more adorable sight than fresh-scrubbed Stevens in his red uniform entering the grungy town where the police are stationed. He is gorgeous.....and quite a fine actor. It is a shame that he wasn't able to get to a better place with his acting career. The film is peppered with a ton of familiar (if dirty) faces from old westerns of TV and film. All of the lynch mob look like people who've been guest villain on "Bonanza" or "The Big Valley". One major drawback is Dickinson. It's hard to believe that someone can be miscast in a role as tiny as this one, but she is. Her anachronistic teased hair drains what little 1930's period flavor there is from the film and she is wooden in all her scenes. Apparently, she was stunt-cast because of her previous work with Marvin, but it failed miserably. There is a bit of a connection to "Dances with Wolves" in this film, Maury Chaykin and Tantoo Cardinal appear in both films and Bronson even develops a similar relationship with a vicious dog as Costner does with his wolf. The film is something like "First Blood" + "The Fugitive" x snow - 40 years. It is a great example of the "Bronson versus the world" type of film and offers a solid Marvin performance as well. There is more going on here than one might think. The final showdown is quite dramatic and suspenseful. The scenery is also great.

With a lurid title like "Death Hunt" and lead actors like Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, it would be easy to dismiss this film as just another shoot-'em-up run through the mill to capitalize on the marquee names (particularly Bronson). To do so, however, would be to overlook a well-made gem of an adventure film.

The problem, of course, with most films of this ilk is that they offer a minimum set-up and characters and then set the guns a-blazin'. Not so here. The premise is established well, with Bronson as the noble loner and Marvin as the gruff, weary Canadian Mountie. The themes and plot devices are familiar, to be sure - the sense of honor, the anti-hero, the wet behind the ears rookie lawman, even a little bit of a love story.

I had seen most of this film on cable and thought I understood it. Recently I rented it so I could finally see the first half hour and my feelings about it changed. Seeing the film from start to finish, I realized I had misjudged the intentions of the Marvin character. I thought the character was just another "honorable to the point of dishonorable" hero, when in fact he's a conflicted man. During the film, you can see that he knows he's as much responsible for what has happened, and he's not so much interested in "doing the right thing" as he is in covering his own rear end.

I was surprised to see in the beginning that the film is set in 1931; it seems much like a Western. But then you realize that this was still a very isolated area and that, unlike the southwest, civilization hadn't quite caught up with this part of the world yet - particularly with lawmen like Marvin on duty.

"Death Hunt" delivers all the goods. There is plenty of action and excitement, yet also a lot of substance as the story unfolds. It's a notch above most films of its kind. I enjoyed it so much that I'm considering adding it to my own DVD library, and I'd also like to learn more about the real story that it is based on.

Charles Bronson has less than fifty words of dialogue in this film, since he spends most of it running through the snow on his own pursued by the mounties, but it is still one of his better films from the late seventies and early eighties era.

He plays the real life character Albert Johnson, a fur trapper who killed some people in a dispute over dogs and went on the run in territory which had never been crossed during the ferocious Arctic winter. He successfully got away from them, despite the fact that they had many men, dogs and even an aeroplane to help them to track him down.

This movie version is simple blood and thunder stuff, with a starry cast, some strong language and a handful of sparkling action sequences. It has weak points too, such as the wasted character played by Angie Dickinson, and a few slow patches in terms of pacing. However, when you think that Bronson was mainly working on such dross as The Evil That Men Do, Death Wish II, and Ten to Midnight at this point in his career, this is at least a slightly above-average film worthy of his rugged talents.