The Stone Killer (1973)

The Stone Killer, released in 1973, was third of the six films directed by Michael Winner that starred Charles Bronson.

Bronson had been around for a very long time and had been a minor presence in 1950s TV (including the lead role in the interesting Man with a Camera series). He seemed destined never to be a major star. He just didn’t have movie star good looks. He had a fact that looked like it had been kicked around a football field. He lacked obvious movie star charm. It was Michael Winner who realised that Bronson really did have star quality, albeit unconventional star quality. And he had a very masculine brand of charisma. There were other movie tough guys but Bronson was just a whole lot tougher.

The Stone Killer can be considered to be part of a wave of movies set against a background of seemingly out-of-control urban violent crime but it is important to point out that unlike the next Winner-Bronson movie, Death Wish, this is not a vigilante movie. The character played by Bronson, Lieutenant Lou Torrey, is a cop. Having become somewhat controversial he accepts an offer to move over to the the west coast but in L.A. he is still cop. He is now a Detective-Lieutenant in the LAPD.

While his methods are ruthless and sometimes unconventional and while he has major disagreements with senior officers over his current case he does at all times act with the knowledge of, and the approval of, his immediate superior Captain of Detectives Les Daniels (Norman Fell). He is not a rogue cop.

And the shooting which upset his superiors at the beginning of the story was justified. The punk, who had already shot a cop, pulled a gun and pointed it directly at him. Lou Torrey blew the punk away, which is what a cop is going to do in such a situation.

Over-sensitive critics at the time (and today) were very upset by movies like this one and Dirty Harry and Death Wish which did not conform to the politically acceptable line that it’s the violent criminals who are the real victims. And some over-sensitive viewers will be clutching their pearls at many points during the film.

The case gets moving when Armitage, a burnt-out hitman facing a drugs charge, offers Lou information that a major hit is going to go down soon. That’s all that Lou finds out. It’s an essential ingredient of the plot that although the audience knows what’s going on the cops initially do not have a clue. But it is obvious that it’s not just some businessman hiring a hitman to kill an inconvenient business partner. Armitage had been a senior Mob trigger man. And whoever is behind this hit soon demonstrates a willingness to kill anyone who might conceivably spill the beans to the cops. And they’re sufficiently well organised to kill people in police custody. It has to be something big.

Now this was the 70s, when left-wing urban terrorism was a big thing in the U.S. (and in Europe as well). So when the police top brass jump to the conclusion that whatever is going to go down is likely to be political that’s not an implausible conclusion. But Lou Torrey doesn’t buy it, and he’s right.

The audience knows what is going on. It’s wild and crazy but Winner was trying to make a movie that would be a manic adrenalin-charged exercise in frenetic action and large-scale mayhem and that wild premise is perfect for such purposes.

And this movie really delivers on the mayhem front. It’s like a full-scale war. And the action scenes are terrific. And the momentum just keeps building as Torrey slowly starts to realise the sheer scale and insanity of the crime, and as the momentum builds it gets more manic and deranged.

There’s also Lou’s amusing encounter with the hippies at the ashram. It’s a swipe at the counter-culture but I enjoyed it.

Bronson is excellent. Lou Torrey isn’t a vigilante or a maverick cop as such but he is a force of nature. He’s an effective cop because he’s unstoppable.

Norman Fell was always good in these kinds of roles. I can’t tell you anything about the character played by Martin Balsam but he’s very good.

Michael Winner really pushes the buttons of many critics and film scholars. Their disapproval of the subject matter of films like Death Wish makes them unable to admit that maybe the guy actually knew how to direct movies and that maybe his films were successful because they were actually entertaining.

The highlight of the Blu-Ray extras is an audio recording of a lecture given by Michael Winner in 1970. He really was a very funny man and he wasn’t afraid of being provocative and he’s a joy to listen to.

The Stone Killer promises action and mayhem and it delivers the good. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Winner’s extremely interesting 1964 film The System (one of six he did with Oliver Reed). And I’ve reviewed his much misunderstood Death Wish (1974), his superb The Mechanic (1972) and his very underrated spy thriller Scorpio (1973).