He didn't want to be hero... until the day they pushed him too far.

Why are they saying it's the one movie you should see this year? Ask anyone who's seen it. Anyone.

Organised crime has met its match

Elmore Leonard's script for Mr. Majestyk was, like his novel, supposed to have concentrated on the plight of Chicano migrant workers; but what emerged on screen was extensively reshaped into a standard Charles Bronson vehicle. Battle-weary Vietnam veteran Vince Majestyk (Bronson) settles down in rural Colorado, hoping to make a living as a watermelon farmer. Despite his new-found pacifism, Majestyk can't seem to stay out of trouble, and he lands in jail, where he foils a breakout engineered by Mob boss Frank Renda (Al Lettieri). Offering to bring in Renda in exchange for his own freedom, Majestyk finds himself the main target of the Mob, who is also extorting vast sums of money from Vince's fellow farmers. It is bad enough when the crooks begin roughing up Majestyk's field hands; but when they ruthlessly machine-gun his entire melon crop, they've gone too far. Teaming up with Chicano labor activist Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal) (any relation to Cesar?), Majestyk decides to track down the mobsters one by one and mete out retribution.

Vince Majestyk (Charles Bronson) is a former U. S. Army Ranger instructor and Vietnam War veteran who now owns a remote watermelon farm in rural Colorado. He needs to harvest his crop in order to keep the farm financially solvent.
A small-time hoodlum, Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo), attempts to coerce Majestyk into a protection racket of using unskilled drunks to harvest his watermelon crop. Majestyk runs Kopas off (with his own shotgun) and instead hires skilled Mexican migrant workers, including Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal), a crops picker union leader, with whom Majestyk begins a relationship. Kopas brings assault charges against him, however, causing Majestyk to be arrested and taken to the local jail.
There he meets Frank Renda (Al Lettieri), a notorious mob hit man being transferred to a higher-security prison. Renda's men try to break him out of police custody during a prisoner movement in a bus. In the escape attempt, Majestyk drives off in the bus with Renda still in handcuffs. Majestyk plans on trading Renda back to the police so that he can finish his harvest. Renda offers his captor $25,000 for his freedom but Majestyk just wants to get back to his melons.
With the help of his lawyer girlfriend Wiley (Lee Purcell), Renda escapes from Majestyk. He meets up with his right-hand man Lundy and plans his revenge on Majestyk. The violent Renda is advised to fly to Mexico to elude a police dragnet looking for him, but he is blinded by his desire for revenge. He tells his men to find the "melon picker" so that he can have the satisfaction of killing him personally.
Rather than being afraid, Majestyk turns the tables. He sets a trap at Renda's cabin hideout. Renda betrays his own men, leading to Lundy's death and to Kopas being captured, prior to a final showdown between Majestyk and Renda.


Release Date: July 17, 1974

Distrib: United Artists