It's a lesser effort shot in a small French seaport where Charles Bronson is an improbable fisherman with a wife (Ullmann) and daughter. He has a hidden past and it catches up to him in the person of a handful of thuggish goons led by James Mason with a mangled Southern accent. There's not really that much action and the suspense isn't too suspenseful But you have to hand it to Bronson. I mean, look at the guy. A Lithuanian coal miner from Pennsylvania who leveraged his exotic face and sinewy muscles into stardom of a sort. In "House of Wax" (1954), with a crew cut, he was a mute sculptor in a minor villainous role. Then step by step he built up his career into that of an action movie star, more popular in Europe than America. With that go-to-hell bandido mustache he turned into an international icon without ever making a respectable movie.
Partly, I think, it must have been his muscles. He wasn't a bulging body builder like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he had what people of that ilk call "definition." The very veins of his arms stood out like logs and his pectorals were like the bronze breast plates of ancient Rome. And that face! If you shook his family tree a Kahlkha Mongol might fall out of it.
I've always enjoyed "Mr. Majestyk" because Bronson was an Elmore Leonard kind of guy. He was just a farmer growing watermelons, not much smarter or braver than anyone else. Just enough to come off the winner.
In "Cold Sweat" he breaks heads and necks with his bare hands. He's supposed to be the best driver around but there's little evidence of it because in the requisite car chase along the twisting roads of the Alps Maritime his car is all over the pavement, jerking this way and that, and he fails to cut curves on the inside of the arc.
The goons are simply goons waiting to die. None is really distinguishable from any of the others in their villainy, except for James Mason as the Southerner wearing a lavender sailor's cap with the brim turned down around his ears. How he ever got into this piece of junk, he's no longer in a position to reveal.
It's 1970 here, the end of an era, and Jill Ireland, Bronson's wife, shows up as a hippie with a headband, a guitar, and a -- what did they call them again? -- yes, a "reefer." Eminently skippable.
Partly, I think, it must have been his muscles. He wasn't a bulging body builder like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he had what people of that ilk call "definition." The very veins of his arms stood out like logs and his pectorals were like the bronze breast plates of ancient Rome. And that face! If you shook his family tree a Kahlkha Mongol might fall out of it.
I've always enjoyed "Mr. Majestyk" because Bronson was an Elmore Leonard kind of guy. He was just a farmer growing watermelons, not much smarter or braver than anyone else. Just enough to come off the winner.
In "Cold Sweat" he breaks heads and necks with his bare hands. He's supposed to be the best driver around but there's little evidence of it because in the requisite car chase along the twisting roads of the Alps Maritime his car is all over the pavement, jerking this way and that, and he fails to cut curves on the inside of the arc.
The goons are simply goons waiting to die. None is really distinguishable from any of the others in their villainy, except for James Mason as the Southerner wearing a lavender sailor's cap with the brim turned down around his ears. How he ever got into this piece of junk, he's no longer in a position to reveal.
It's 1970 here, the end of an era, and Jill Ireland, Bronson's wife, shows up as a hippie with a headband, a guitar, and a -- what did they call them again? -- yes, a "reefer." Eminently skippable.