St. Ives (1976)

          Charles Bronson’s ’70s filmography is not only massive (23 movies between 1970 and 1979!), but also surprisingly eclectic, with projects ranging from his signature meat-and-potatoes shoot-’em-ups to occasional character-driven thrillers. St. Ives is in the latter mode, with a light drizzling of comedy, so it would be heartening to report that it’s a lost gem. Alas, such is not the case, even though Bronson plays against type as Raymond St. Ives, a crime-book author who moonlights as a courier for assorted disreputable types. Since the character is a suave tough guy instead of the usual Bronson savage, it is painfully apparent the producers conceived this movie for Steve McQueen and settled for Bronson without tweaking the material accordingly. Bronson also neglected to adjust his style for this atypical character, which exacerbates the problems of an illogical and uneventful script. As a result, the picture never achieves liftoff. Helmed by regular Bronson collaborator J. Lee Thompson with blunt force when a sly Hitchcockian approach was needed, St. Ives could have been a pithy mystery complete with a smart-ass hero and a smoldering mystery woman (Jacqueline Bisset), but instead, it’s a dull action movie filled with ineffective dialogue scenes.

          The movie starts promisingly, providing interesting details about the protagonist (he used to be a crime reporter, justifying his nonplussed attitude toward crooks), but once the story gets humming, St. Ives gets stuck in the machinations of a murky plot, endangering the lead character in ways that don’t have much credibility or impact. St. Ives swans in and out of adventures indifferently, and it feels as if he could walk away at any point without consequences. The story has something to do with St. Ives being hired by a wealthy eccentric (John Houseman) to recover stolen ledgers containing incriminating evidence, although the filmmakers never properly explain why the eccentric hires an outsider for a simple job. For a while, it’s novel to watch Bronson get into a different kind of trouble (following clues instead of simply annihilating everyone in sight), but soon enough St. Ives falls into the actor’s usual violent groove. Worse, the movie implodes when it tries to present a complex pattern of double-crosses that kills momentum and muddies the narrative. So even though the cast is filled with enjoyable performers (Dana Elcar, Dick O’Neill, Maximillian Schell, even a young Robert Englund), and despite the fabulously dated but spunky jazz-disco score by Lalo Schifrin, St. Ives is a dud.

St. Ives: LAME