Melon-choly Baby

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

MR. MAJESTYK

Directed by RICHARD FLEISCHER

Screenplay by ELMORE LEONARD

Fresh from his fascistic triumphs as a vigilante on the sidewalks of New York in Death Wish, busy Charles Bronson is now giving equal time to liberalmindedness. As Mr. Majestyk, he plays a farmer trying to keep the Mafia out of his melon patch and a nice crew of Mexican migrants at work there, labor goons notwithstanding. Bronson's style is more suited to the open country than it is to the urban landscape.

It takes some doing for Writer Leonard to get the gangsters stirring about credibly in the south 40, but Director Fleischer manages a few action sequences that occasionally distract one from the general silliness of the whole enterprise. Al Lettieri may be the heaviest-handed heavy now operating in the movies, but he does bring a certain entertaining enthusiasm to his work as a big-city hit man lost in the alien corn. Any other actor might have broken up when required to order an innocent and helpless melon crop to be machine-gunned as an act of vengeance. But the sadistic gleam in Lettieri's eye burns bright through a scene that proves there is entirely too much juice and rind in our movies today.

Richard Schickel

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