Richard Fleischer's gritty, forceful action drama, concerning a Vietnam veteran named Vince Majestyk, a Colorado watermelon framer, played sensationally by the late great Charles Bronson, in one of his best roles, he is wronged by a irritating, weasel-like, unscrupulous labor racketeer, Bobby Kopas, superbly played by Paul Koslo, who tries to force him to hired a worthless crew of bums and vagrants to pick his melons, instead of using his Mexican migrant workers he employed. Kopas pulls a shotgun on Majestyk, and ends up getting the shit kick out of him, for which Majestyk is arrested for and sent to the city jail, there he encounters a notorious Mob hitman, Frank Renda, played terrifically by the late character actor Al Lettieri, in a tremendous scene-stealing performance, who is waiting to be transferred to prison for murder. When Renda's mob associates stage a daring breakout during his prison transfer on a bus with Majestyk, but then Majestyk seizes Renda, and tries to make a deal with the police to exchange him for his freedom, the ruthless Renda escapes and is now hellbent on killing Majestyk personally, what follows is a rapid action thriller filled with shootouts, exciting car chases, and bare-fisted brawls. Astute direction by Fleischer, with a wonderful tongue-in-cheek script by Elmore Leonard, and a superb score by Charles Bernstein. Highly Recommended.

While Mr. Majestyk wasn't the extravaganza of awesomeness I'd come to expect over the years, it was definitely a fun movie. Charles Bronson literally plays a tough as nails, down to earth melon farmer (and probably the reason that "melon farmer" is substituted for "motherfucker" whenever you watch an edited movie on TV) who calls them as he sees them and goes to war with a high-ranking mob hit man. Again, Mr. Majestyk isn't particularly great but where it lacks in story it makes up for in action and where it didn't age well. Bronson is great and the watermelon execution scene was pretty damn hysterical.