In short: The Mechanic (1972)

Arthur Bishop (Charles Bronson) is working as a hitman for a large, secretive criminal organization. He is specialized in murders prepared and executed in complicated ways that make them look like accidents. Bishop clearly prides himself on being rather good at his job, yet his late middle age has brought him some existential discontent. It’s not just that he gets bad news from his physician, nor that his latest job was killing an old friend, Big Harry (Keenan Wynn), after he asked him for help, it’s something deeper, though we can be pretty sure it’s not a “conscience” or anything silly like that.

When Bishop meets Harry’s son Steve (Jan-Michael Vincent), it is very much love at first sight between the two, as if they had recognized each other as one of a kind at once. Steve, it turns out, is a sociopath and an asshole, and as such ideal for the profession of professional killer. Arthur decides to teach him his trade.

If you have any thoughts about Simon West’s remake of this one, just banish them at once. West’s movie leaves out everything that’s interesting about this Michael Winner film, leaving an empty husk of an action film where something much more thoughtful belongs. Yes, I’m surprised myself to use the term “thoughtful” to describe a Michael Winner film – or to actually like one so much I’m tempted to call it brilliant - but in The Mechanic, the old sleazebag managed to fuse his lurid tendencies and the required men’s adventure style violence with well-formed observations concerning the nature and character of his protagonist and his apprentice. Why, the longer the film goes on, the more it turns out to be deeply interested in questions of ethics, in the rules men of violence observe or not, and in exploring the conceptual borders between order and chaos. There’s also quite a bit about generational differences to be found here.

All that while his film also delivers on the fronts one typically would expect of a Winner/Bronson joint: there’s quite a bit of action, of course, though it is much less sloppily directed than typical of Winner. There are also some moments that made this viewer deeply uncomfortable – particularly the suicide sequence comes to mind – but for once, these moments are in a Winner movie for a thematic reason, making points about these men and their world where no woman even has an actual character name (the homosexual subtext hardly bothering with the sub at all). It’s not at all what I’ve come to expect of Winner.


Bronson and Vincent are perfect for their roles. Bronson uses his calm presence acting in the best way possible, applying nuances of posture and scowling in ways that often suggest much about the things his character would never be able to say to anyone. Vincent’s cocky smugness is terrifically on point here, suggesting that where Bishop has hidden depths and a hole he doesn’t know how to fill, Steve just has a hole that doesn’t need filling.