Hard Times from 1975, freshly reissued on Blu-ray by Eureka!, is a tough and tidy boxing film set in Louisiana in the 1930s and it captures Bronson at his smouldering best. One film from that era, though, does show Bronson as the big, bad brooding actor he was when he moved himself out of his safety zone. What it did do, though, was cloud the very real talent that lay beneath the sleepwalking killer with the bad tache that we all remember him for now.
CHARLES BRONSON HARD TIMES SERIES
Morally reprehensible and increasingly empty as that series of revenge thrillers were, it's hard to deny old Charlie the right to a little time in the spotlight with all the financial riches such success brought for him, his wife Jill Ireland and their extensive family. It was that brash Brit Michael Winner who made Bronson an international icon with his crudely effective Death Wish series. What happened instead was a run of low-key European films that never quite elevated him to the star status he craved. When Sergio Leone cast him as the quiet but deadly hero of Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) he should have secured his place at Tinsel Town's top table.
CHARLES BRONSON HARD TIMES TV
He saw action as an aerial gunner in the Second World War and even when he took to acting as a way to drag himself out of his poverty he struggled for decades as little more than a make weight heavy in Hollywood B-movies and flimsy TV shows. As one of 15 children of Polish-Lithuanian parents he grew up in the harsh coal-mining country of Pennsylvania. Hard. life of Charles Bronson was tougher than any of the steely-eyed hard men he played on screen.
CHARLES BRONSON HARD TIMES 720P
In my mind this is a true classic.īRRip 720p | MKV | 1280 x 720 | x264 2560 Kbps | 1h 33mn | 1.97 GBĪudio: English AC3 5.1 448 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded) And once business is concluded personal relationships are renewed. Even the film’s “heavy” has the decency to pay due homage to the skill of his nemesis. Interestingly they seem genuinely pleased with the resolution of their problem. They want their money and do what they have to to collect. For example, the loan sharks mean business but aren’t bloodthirsty. Perhaps because all the characters, even the antagonists are depicted as real humans and not caricatures. I saw Hard Times when it first came out and it never left me. The story is great, the acting is great and the music is great, particularly the closing piece of blue grass. Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Strother Martin are superb. There is a quality about it that touches the soul. In the end, a rival manager named Gandil (Michael McGuire) buys Speed’s debt and forces Chaney to fight Speed against his toughest foe yet.Īlso Known As (AKA): Ein stahlharter Mann, El luchador, Le bagarreur, The Streetfighter, L’eroe della strada, O Lutador da Rua, Street Fighter They win, but Speed gambles and loses his portion and remains in debt. They hire a cut man named Poe (Strother Martin), and Speed borrows cash from some gangsters to bet on Chaney’s fight.
Speed (James Coburn), an avid gambler, recognizes his talent and becomes his manager.
During the Great Depression, Chaney (Charles Bronson) bare-knuckle boxes to survive.