Pluskylang Great Film overall

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

SnoopyStyle Mafia don Al Vescari (Martin Balsam) seeks revenge against the heads of criminal families around the country using a team of Vietnam vets. Police detective Lou Torrey (Charles Bronson) loses his job after the death of a young suspect. He gets a new job in L.A. He stumbles upon Vescari's plan and starts investigating with Daniels (Norman Fell).This has some darker police drama. It's not the most thought out but it works. There are some interesting bad guys. Bronson would do Death Wish the year after. The movie climaxes with lots of crashing cars, gunfire, and general fire in an underground parking lot. It's a fun, action-packed, exciting ending to a fine crime drama.

bkoganbing The Stone Killer finds Charles Bronson as a New York detective exiled to Los Angeles after a controversial shooting. While in Los Angeles Bronson discovers bit by bit a massive assassination plot of organized crime bosses. His biggest task is to convince his superiors to keep probing into this.Martin Balsam is a purist and a Sicilian. 42 years after the famous feud in gangland lore the Castellammarese War he wants to get back at the guys who infiltrated the Mafia. Guys like Luciano and Costello who brought in all kinds of outsiders like Jews into organized crime. A few years earlier in the Kirk Douglas film The Brotherhood he got recruited to avenge the death of his father in that same war by getting a betrayer. Sicilians have long memories, don't forget, and hold grudges. In fact right around this time Joey Gallo was killed and among his sins was bringing in, heaven forfend, blacks into his family as associates.Balsam is putting this all together for April 10, the anniversary of the last shootings with the help of Stuart Margolin recruiting a lot of disgruntled Vietnam veterans who've learned the trade. Sad to say this was another of those films in the Seventies where everyone who served in Vietnam was labeled a psychotic killer.There's enough action here to satisfy any Bronson fan including a slam bang shootout with the NYPD and Balsam's picked crew. I will say that there certainly will be a leadership vacuum to contend with.

Brian T. Whitlock (GOWBTW) This movie with Charles Bronson was extremely no nonsense, whatsoever. "The Stone Killer" is when Bronson plays a hard as nails cop who uncovered a group of Vietnam veterans who are do the dirty work for the Mafia. That form of dirty work is to take out the completion. In this movie, there are future "Three's Company" stars John Ritter and Norman Fell. Ritter plays the one in uniform, while Fell plays Lou Torrey's boss Les Daniels. Lou Torrey (Bronson) worked for the NYPD, until a incident with a young offender caused him to quit the force. So he ends up moving to Los Angeles as a detective to investigate mob like killings. It turns out that the mafia has been using Vietnam veterans to kill the competition. Some of their help have ended up dead by the people that hired them. This was a coast to coast situation for the police to handle. And Torres showed plenty of tenacity to put an end to this mess. The shootout in both areas was awesome. Especially in the parking lot scene in New York. Great movie, great plot, great cast, "The Stone Killer" makes great sense! 3 out of 5 stars

Enforcer686 You either get Old Stone Face or you don't. I get him. He played virtually the same type of character in every movie from the '70s forward, although his character's profession changed from time to time. Didn't matter if he was an unflinching streetwise cop that walks outside the law to bring justice, an architect, or an amazingly tough journalist that can beat up bad guys as easily as normal people breath air (how often do you see that?), he was always a character that looked out for what was right, the law be damned. And no mamby pamby metrosexual stuff anywhere in sight.....This movie was interesting to me in that it was filmed during the prime of the '70s Cop Movie glory days and also happened to be part of the golden age for Bronson himself. I dig the terrible period clothing, hair and lingo. I also dig the neo-psychedelic soundtrack. It was rather amusing seeing Bronson amongst the young hippie burnouts at a wacked out party when he was searching for clues, talk about a fish out of water! And even way back then, the ever popular grouchy old Italian mobster stereotype was in full play, although this was one of the first Bronson films to do this (and it often resurfaced in his movies, even in Death Wish 4 decades later). It also featured several familiar faces including "Mr. Roper" of Three's Company as a cop(!) and "Jack Tripper" of the same show as a bumbling, inept rookie cop. Those with either sharp memories or an extensive Twilight Zone collection will recognize Mob Boss Vescari as the star of the much loved wax figures episode (New Exhibit).You're not going to see Oscar type performances in a Bronson film, but then again, that's not what they were shooting for. You do get a glimpse of a great period of gritty American cop films. They didn't have the internet to help them. No GPS. No Google maps. Just coffee, steel revolvers, typewriters and good old fashioned investigational work, and of course real cars that were driven to death by stunt men, not computer generated crashes. And you do get politically incorrect, 150 proof MANDOM of the kind that isn't made any more. And that makes for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon in my book.