The Mechanic (1972)

Alright so tonight I watched the 1972 version of The Mechanic, I really wanted to see the first one before I see the one out in theaters. I like to see the comparison between the new and the old. This version of The Mechanic has Charles Bronson as Arthur Bishop, the old aging hitman. And Jan-Michael Vincent as Steve McKenna, who is the young kid and student of Arthur. I have a few complaints about this movie and even fewer compliments. But I had to take in account that this movie was made in the early 70's and this basically means that movies were styled a bit differently. Read what I mean after the jump.

My biggest complaint in this whole movie is that the scene changes were abrupt and annoying. It felt that I had A.D.D throughout this movie, because the scenes would last 2 minutes tops, and would change over to something almost unrelated to the previous scene. It was hard to stay on pace with this movie. Another thing that turned me off was the ending. The end just came out of no where and was real unannounced. I thought the climax of the movie was at the last 5 minutes. Another thing that was weird was that there were no characters talking through out the first 16 minutes of the movie, it felt long and boring. It was basically Arthur setting up a hit on a person. That reminds me of another flaw, Arthur has all these random hits on people. He just gets random mail envelope saying he should kill said person. The envelope has their picture, bio, medical records and everything else. How easy is that for him? I would like to know why he is going out to kill these people, might make it more interesting knowing the justification on the killings.

Arthur and his apprentice, Steve.

The few good things about this movie are the few action themes. There was a motorcycle scene and car chase scene, which in my books were pretty good. They lacked a bit of excitement and didn't seem to be a nail bitter, but the action was well done and was interesting to watch. And I am stuck trying to figure out anything else I liked in this movie, OH it was a rather short movie, only 1 hour and 39 minutes long. Yep, that is all I can think of, seriously not a lot of shining moments in this movie.

What's this? You want to hear about more of the flaws in this movie. How about this one, there is a scene where Arthur walks into a house occupied by a female. This female is all over Arthur and telling him about her love for him and how she wrote a love letter but didn't send it because Arthur moves around too much. Arthur is trying to be the hard shelled tough guy so he responds with grunts and tough words. Then she throws herself at him and fades to black. Arthur wakes up the next morning and asks her how much, she responses a hundred more than last time 'cause the love note took time to make. Wait she was a hooker? Where the hell did that come from? Uggh, I hate when movies do that, it isn't fun or surprising. And why do I need to know that Arthur hires hookers occasionally, not like that ever comes up in the movie later on. And the movie is filled with this garbage.

To summarize, this movie was boring, it was bland and I don't see the awesomeness of Charles Bronson, and yes this is the first movie I have had seen him act in. Also the acting was as bland as this movie, let alone there were only two characters. When movies like these come out, I regret myself for not watching more of my terrible budget movies. Sadly, I really don't want to see the new one now because this movie sucked. But I might still see it, mainly because Jason Stratham is in that movie.