In Mr. Majestyk, Vince Majestyk (Bronson) absolutely has to get his watermelon crop in, come hell or high water, and nothing in the world is going to stop him. One day, Bobby Kopas (Koslo) shows up on the farm and attempts to force Majestyk to use his crew of winos rather than the hand-picked migrant labor that he employed. Instead, Majestyk takes the outclassed punk's shotgun away from him like a father taking away a misbehaving child's toy and sends him on his way with some sore testicles. Kopas swears out an assault complaint on Majestyk, and soon the melon grower finds himself in the county lockup. In jail, he meets hitman Renda (Lettieri), and the two regard each other with hostility and suspicion. In a segment worthy of action director John Frankenheimer, Renda's pals try to break him out of a prison bus in a street shootout. Instead, Majestyk commandeers the bus and drives off with Renda, with the intention of using him as a pawn to get the charges dropped on himself -- so he can get his melon crop in, of course. The situation turns over several times before the movie's conclusion, a spectacular chase scene that plays like a vintage commercial for Ford trucks as Majestyk's Old Yeller pickup goes flying, with him in the back clutching a 12-gauge and holding on for dear life. Mr. Majestyk's script was written by none other than Elmore Leonard himself, and the rhythms of his hard-bitten prose are clear throughout. As expected with a Leonard story, there are plenty of plot flip-flops and more than a little tongue-in-cheek humor (the stony Bronson even gets a few of the good lines). Lettieri was a large, ugly, intimidating man (recognizable from Peckinpah's The Getaway), a perfect bit of casting as the ruthless goon Renda. However, despite his size and bearing, Renda still received a royal ass-whupping or two from Majestyk. Koslo, on the other hand, made a career of playing exactly the type of wormy character that he portrayed in this movie -- tough-talking snotnoses with Jell-O for spines. A word of warning: Vegetarians and those with sensitive temperaments may be disturbed by the machine-gun slaughter of hundreds of defenseless watermelons in one of the movie's more sublime scenes. It's not great stuff, but in the same vein as Prime Cut, Mr. Majestyk is a fast-moving Seventies action flick that doesn't take itself too seriously and isn't above a blithely ridiculous plot device or two.
