O Grande Assalto

"Some have a life time/Some just a Day..... Nothing's ever forever/ Forever's a lie..." So goes the theme of this excellent and memorable movie. Bronson shows his talent not only as an actor but as a comic. Jill Ireland also exceeds anything she did before or after. Her shock as she realizes Graham is telling the truth is alone worth the price of admission. Perhaps not for Bronson fans but rather for those of us who enjoyed "Cat Ballou", "Support your Local Sheriff/Gunfighter" and 'The Halleluia Trail". Adult comedy westerns come no better than this.

I'm shocked to learn that only 17 comments were written in the IMDb so far. I've seen this movie 20 years ago and for a second time last week. I still feel this is a great movie.

Full of inspiration and transpiration, with excellent script and directing, not to mention the great performance by the 2 leading actor and actress, both exhibiting masterpiece achievements for their professionalism.

It was a low cost production, but great film doesn't necessarily cost much. It's a complete waste of movie resource that so little people had seen this masterpiece.

Probably Bronson's only comedy, I strongly and unreservedly recommend it to anyone!

And its a Charles Bronson film! With a pretty good train crash too! I guess Bronson wanted to make a romantic comedy western with his gorgeous wife Jill Ireland and instead of starring in BILLY TWO HATS or THE SPIKES GANG or some other forgotten oater, he went for this. Rather like a BUTCH CASSIDY - CAT BALLOU combo, this small but charming robbery western gets its title from the afternoon liason he spends with Jill inbetween crime appointments. As Bryan Brown said about adultery in BREAKER MORANT: "A slice off a cut loaf is never missed............!" NOON TILL THREE did little business at the time and is never seen now, pity as like alot of small mid 70s films they are well made and still from the days when films were made to entertain, not shock or traumatise.

Never have I seen a Bronson flicker as bizarre as this gem. Here we have a outlaw who breezes into the life of a lonely, remote woman on the post civil war outback. Their relationship takes off like a ruptured duck, producing an outcome that only the likes of a taro card reader could predict. I loved the way this story played out as the action led from one stranger than fiction event to another. This led Bronson's character to lose the one thing more valuable to him than all the bank money he had ever desired and his lover to lose even more. This was a top notch Charles Bronson film, well written and played out, possibly the best thing I've seen him in yet. Thumbs up.

This modest little gem is a humorous, funny, melancholic movie about what you can encounter if you fall in love with a romantic woman - you can end up bigger than life, and that can get you into serious trouble! Bronson - far from his usual he-man cliché roles - delivers a very nice, humorous performance; and so does Jill Ireland. Just watch it, even if you are far from being a Bronson fan - this droll flick is enjoyable for everyone!

To tell you more, and make you understand, one cannot avoid spoilers; so here's the plot:

***** SPOILERS *****************************

Graham Dorsey (Bronson) is a member of a gang which is on their way to rob a bank. Being frightened of the job, he takes the chance to stay in a house by the road until his buddies come back from the job.

The lady of the house, Amanda (Ireland), a young, attractive widow, is alone in the house. Graham manages to get her to bed with him. They fall for each other (he pretends to be somewhat more noble than he really is), and share some hours of love and bliss - until a posse comes to catch him (the robbery had failed). He tries to flee (telling Amanda he goes to free his accomplices). But he ends up in jail, sentenced for another man's frauds, while the other man is erroneously shot in his place. So Amanda gets word that Graham is dead.

Amanda, formerly an honorable widow, now looked upon as a bandit's mistress, is alone in her grief. She writes a book about the story; but Graham having overstated, and Amanda having a strong tendency to romanticize and idealize her feelings, she describes the whole story much bigger than life. The book becomes a best-seller; not only locally, but all over the world. The tale gets a huge hype.

So when Graham is free again after a year in jail, and comes back into town (in disguise) for Amanda, he finds, to his surprise and growing amusement, some sort of "Graham Dorsey Disneyland" at the place, built around the book's tale. And Amanda's house has turned into a GD museum, visited by loads of tourists guided by Amanda who tells them "her story". He, too, enters, asking for a tour. He gets it; Amanda does not recognize him - not even when he takes his masquerade off: she simply does not believe him - she believes her book, and in her book, he is bigger, more beautiful, and better in any respect! (very funny scene)

Finally, he succeeds to make her believe him. But to his big surprise, Amanda does not want the real GD - she prefers to live for the legend! She tells him that formerly, it was a matter of just the two of them; but now it has become a matter of the feelings of all the world, which she would not hurt by destroying the myth. Even when he tries to apply force, she just steals his gun and demands that he leaves forever. He refuses. When she sees no more way to change his mind, she even shoots herself before his eyes.

On his following lonely odyssey, he meets the Graham & Amanda hype everywhere, ad nauseam: and whenever he gets up to protest against the lies, saying that HE is GD, he is laughed at, shouted down, or even threatened for his "fraud". Irony of fate: it is only in the end, when he is put in an asylum for his "lunacy", among the lunatics, that Graham finds people who believe him and accept him, and finds his peace of mind.

*********** END OF SPOILERS *******************

So this movie, though playing in a western milieu, is at its core a story of the fate of an unusual love. It is very unpretentious (far away from roaring schmaltz like "Gone with the wind" or "Titanic"; lightyears away from that big-mouthed, stylish soulless crap that we have to endure since the eighties), just a humble, bittersweet little (tragi)comedy with moments of the grotesque, about life's pleasures and grief, about becoming a culprit and becoming a victim; about the value and the cost of idealizing and true life. If it wouldn't be for Bronson and Ireland starring, you might call it a B-film. But Charles Bronson - surely not being the king of actors - delivers a very nice, humorous performance here in a very unbronsonesque role, together with his excelling real life wife Jill Ireland. It's a pity that the direction is wooden sometimes. And, fitting superbly to its old-fashioned style, the movie has a nice catchy melancholic little waltz as a theme song ("Hello and Goodbye"/Elmer Bernstein/Alan and Marilyn Bergman, sung by Ireland), dealing with the elusiveness of love.

Give it a chance! You will come out of it thoughtful, I guess; and about how many Hollywood films can you say that?

Valuation: I would spontaneously give it a good 7 out of 10 - but I spontaneously tend to judge relating to an IMDb average valuation of below 5, as it should be; but the actual average being near 7, it should get an 8 (though this is unfair to the comedy masterpieces like Lubitsch's "To be or not to be", or Chaplin's "Modern times"; or Tati's "Jour de fête" - those should have at least a 12, then! :-) )