REVIEW: The Evil That Men Do (1984)

Run Time: 90 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: Old school mandom than you just don’t find anymore

Somewhere in the 2000s I was enlightened on the awesomeness of Charles Bronson’s B-Movies. Particularly the ones from the 1980s.  Each one was more hilarious and brutal than the last, nearly all of them involve Bronson killing pissants outside the law who deserve it.  Here’s another, I recommend checking it out if you haven’t already.  Don’t worry, there’s no shame in not having seen some of Big Charlie’s smaller movies.

There’s a nut on the loose, one who professionally trains tinpot dictators how to torture pissants real good.  The US Government wants him dead, so they set out to hire Bronson, who plays the unwilling assassin.  But Charles!  We know by now in these movies that you’re just going to end up stabbing, shooting and hanging people, so why bother with the pretence?  Well, like most Bronson movies, it doesn’t!  It just gets straight to it.

Bronson is retired from pissant killing and now living on an island that looks suspiciously like Val Verde, where he strolls the beaches jovially and talks to pet fish.  When a man shows up and offers Bronson ‘the job’ of killing the psycho, held up in Guatemala, Bronson resists.  He’s laid all that shit behind him.  That is until the man shows him video interviews of survivors telling tales of woe, such as how the they were forced to eat their own shit.  Bronson has seen enough and takes the first flight down. Atta boy.

This is another Bronson movie where the final product is at odds with the actual premise.  It’s supposed to be a movie about a stealthy assassination.  And the ‘covert’ methods are curious, to say the least.  Does he kill the man with a sniper rifle?  Strangle him quietly?  Bronson has other ideas in mind.  “I’ll need a shotgun.  With a sawn off barrel”.  I like Bronson’s style, how many political thrillers end up with scenes that look like they’re from The Hills Have Eyes?

So, in what one could not exactly describe as a covert manner, Bronson starts terminating ‘The Doctor’s’ goons before giving the man himself an appropriate end.  Now you might wonder, at the height of the Cold War, is an American hanging another man to death in broad daylight in Guatemala with a firehose in front of 40 screaming witnesses, among them a busload of onlooking children, a discrete way of completing a contract killing?

Well you see, it’s okay, ’cause Bronson informs us that the bad guys have successfully fallen for his ‘tourist’ persona.  Yeah, Charles… about that… I think the highspeed chases and pitched gun battles suggest otherwise.  This movie aspires to Cold War commentary way above its pay grade.  Instead, what it actually is is Paul Kersey:  On Vacation.  Or Bronson taking the law into his own hands:  South American edition.  It’s rough and crude.  But it’s Bronson-Manly, its very own brand. These movies shouldn’t be missed.

This is oldschool manliness.  You won’t find some shitty romantic subplot or pontificating speech here.  It’s just Bronson on the fucking loose.