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I love this movie so much

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

A good Bronson performance, but the movie is weak and the "hit man" is cartoonish...looks like someone who couldn't make The Sopranos team. The bad guys have dozens of ways to dispatch Bronson's character, but botch it up time after time. A pretty one-dimensional story, but a good one for Bronson fans.

Although the desert landscape and lowlife milieu appalled me strongly, I remember having seen the Majestyk flick twice, or thrice, knowing as I did that I was supposed to enjoy it, and a similar impression was made upon me, at the same age, by an _actioner with Chuck Norris and Carradine, but I never managed to like Norris as much as Bronson, whom I had first seen in a railway western from the early '70s. Anyway, Bronson brought and suggested a world that was very unlike my own—and sordid, depressing. I know Majestyk isn't a very acclaimed flick, quite on the contrary; but, when I was merely 12, I strove to enjoy it, it was supposed to be manly and what not. (It wasn't boring—and I didn't find it ridiculous, but convincing.) As subject, it's fit for Bronson—sleaze masquerading as social awareness —socially aware sleaze.Its world of scum seemed alien, menacing and disheartening. Later, I grasped that it was the world of pulp and hardboiled fiction—taken, of course, here, to a very undemanding and mindless level. I mean, this is not, I presume, how hardboiled is supposed to look like.Nowadays, movies bore me—maybe all of them, and certainly the very idea of watching them, or taking an interest in them, as I have found them to be only surrogates of art or fun; I have ceased seeing movies. Therefore, I only publish here now and then. As I don't watch movies anymore, perhaps I will go on remembering movies I have seen long ago. Take it as a treat for the fans of this page. The cold ashes of my movie criticism, and of a former identity.

I'm kind of surprised to see all the 8,9, even 10 star reviews for this flick. After Bronson decides to turn in the Lettieri character by calling Lettieri's girlfriend and expects her to deliver them both to the sheriff while he sits in the back seat ... it was downhill from there for me. We started laughing at the stupidity of this plot point when (shock) Lettieri gets the drop on him by pulling a gun (gasp) from the girlfriend's purse. The great melon murder scene was also good for a few snorts. Sorry, I like some Charles Bronson films (The Mechanic, Death Hunt, Hard Times, Once Upon a Time..., and The Magnificent Seven), but I think a more convincing vehicle could have been dreamed up for Il Brutto than a tough-guy melon farmer who manages to tweak the nose of a big-time hit man.

Charlie Bronson's a melon farmer who just wants to get his melons in on time, but fate conspires against him. First of all when he arrives at his melon fields with a crew of migrant labour, he finds that a wannabe tough guy has already set a crew of drunks and vagrants to work. Of course, Charlie soon sees him off with his tail between his legs. The pipsqueak reports him to the police, and because there's a gun involved and Charlie has a history, he finds himself locked up with only his anxiety over his melons going mouldy to keep him company.Actually, that's not quite true because while in the cells he comes across the wonderful Al Lettieri as a ruthless hit man. The bus they're in is ambushed by some of Al's men but Charlie turns the situation to his advantage by kidnapping Al and trading him with the police in return for his own freedom.This is a typical seventies crime thriller that lacks any credible storyline and falls back on the kind of violence typical of both the era and Charles Bronson movies in general. It's also a typical example, I suppose, of why Elmore Leonard never really enjoyed the success as a screenwriter as he did as a writer of novels, even though his novels were 80% dialogue for some reason he never seemed able to translate the natural sound of his written dialogue to the screen. Anyway, the violence is quite brutal – and often gratuitous. At one point bad guy Lettieri and his cronies drive into a portable toilet into which one luckless deputy has just entered. Lettieri prevents his comrade from shooting the dazed cop to death, and picks up a plank instead, which he uses to efficiently batter the poor soul to death. 'Make them think he was run over by a truck,' he explains. We don't actually see the act, just Lettieri's face as he dispassionately goes about his work, and for this reason it is probably the most effective moment of the film.Speaking of Lettieri, he's by far the best thing about this film; it's a shame that he would die within a year or two, cut down by a heart attack at the relatively young age of 47. He was just beginning to make a name for himself as a Hollywood heavy, and there's no doubting that, like here, he would have enlivened many an otherwise routine film if he'd had the opportunity. If you like Bronson films you probably won't be disappointed by this one, but it isn't one that most people are likely to remember.