Donato and Daughter

Okay, the start was awkward, stilted, bad dialogue, bad directing and bad acting(which may have not been the actors faults). I have always like Dana Delany, but it was a difficult watch in the beginning. However, it does get better and a good watch by the end. If you choose to watch this, IMO, this is what to watch for during the movie. Xander Berkeley is very good. Bonnie Bartlett is great. Richard Kuss is very good in his small role. And Jullianna McCarthy gives a wonderful performance as the psychopath's mother. The other actors is their lesser roles are also very good. And that helps if you plan on watching this movie. The end scene was what you might expect for a made for TV movie.

Another excellent Bronson cop thriller & yes it may be a t.v movie but IT'S still an exciting crime thriller!!! Bronson is always great & he's one of my favourite actors & i love most of his movies especially the excellent Death Wish franchise. Here the great screen presence of Bronson is in t.v production & later he did the Excellent family of cops trilogy all t.v flicks but it doesn't take away from the quality & feel of the movie & Donato and daughter is a quality suspense cop thriller with another excellent performance by Bronson as a tough old timer cop who gets tangled up working with his daughter who is also a cop played excellently by Dana Delany she's a really good actress works perfectly With Bronson!!! There is a very sick killer committing horrendous crimes even to nuns & basically it's father & daughter team of cops to track this evil killer down,so it's basic cop thriller territory but done really well with a creepy atmosphere & a really good music score & that is so important in a detective Thriller to score the mood right & create an atmosphere & this excellent little cop film does that perfectly. I really enjoyed this film it was edgy & dark without showing all the gore,it had the mood & fear factor just right & the family drama was done really well with the donato's & you actually care about these characters & really want the sick killer caught or executed!!! So yes another great Bronson film, a great cop thriller & an excellent performance by the legendary Bronson.

A Teflon Tough Cop (Charles Bronson) and his estranged, no less resourceful Cop daughter (Dana Delaney) querulously join forces in order to capture a deranged serial killer (Xander Berkeley) in this entertainingly zippy 90s TV thriller. While the pulpy text is all too familiar, the director's pacing is brisk, the performances are engaging, and, quite frankly, I can never tire of watching the dyspeptic Don of vengeance, Charles Bronson kick butt!!!! By no means an exemplar of Bronson's inimitable felon-fragging ouvre, but well worth a boggle if you are a Bronson fan who missed this one. Gifted character actor Xander Berkeley is on smarmily sinister form as the psycho yuppie with a perverse habit of sending nuns to their maker! Another fine synth score from Sylvester Levay keeps this gripping L. A. Set procedural ticking along nicely until its satisfyingly dramatic conclusion.

The title of my comments is a phrase that I have heard in the movie, coming from the mouth of little Cal. And I think that is an awful phrase to come from a little kid... It reflects perfectly the quality of the present movie, which can not decide if it wants to be a police adventure or a family drama. The fact is that it does not work as either of them. I have not read the book, but the script is really terrible, full of stereotypes and vacuums. In my opinion Charles Bronson's movies are getting worse and worse as he gets older.

Most would be forgiven to not have known about this one off Bronson made for TV movie because originally it was a TV pilot, but it was not picked up as a series after it aired, and was shelved very quickly to be forgotten. Its IMDB rating of 5.7 is generous as there was good reason why it wasn't picked up. This would be the first of Bronson's LAST 5 movies made as his health we failing and he would die in 2003.

A typical TV series of the day but unfortunately an ageing 72 year old Bronson (3 years out from the death of his wife Jill Ireland from breast Cancer, and 6 years out from his last movie & 10 years out from his death)) looked very tired, sluggish, and more like a robot going through the motions and an actor on his last legs.

Dana Delany taking a quick pickup gig between Wild Palms and Tombstone roles played the feminist (a masculine role) of the Lieutenant in charge of the investigation.

This was Delany's worst rated roll in years and it showed. The audience never liked her role nor her relationship with Bronson. It would have been way better to just have Bronson as the main character and call the TV series Donato. Adding Delany as the Feminist Daughter Lieutenant was the mistake that got this TV series CANNED and put on the shelf forever.

This was NOT vintage Bronson as we had all come to love and know. It was sloppy, sluggish, poorly written and didn't do any of the two main actors any justice at all. Many times the lines and edits just didn't make any sense. The story line was common and well worn through many other TV series so there was nothing ORIGINAL.

Bronson would go on the following year to make his final Death Wish: The face of Fear movie, which was by far the worst of the series and an utter flop!

A year after that he would try and repeat the same failed pairing from Donato, this time with Angela Featherstone, of a father and doughtier in the "Family of Cops" trilogy, which were just as bad as this one and would be his last hurrah.