Messenger of Death (1988)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Instead of doing actual writing today I decided to procrastinate and view this 1980s Charles Bronson masterpiece.Here are my two cents...Bronson is a Denver journalist who find him self out for lunch and serial homicide one afternoon. It appears some whackjob lost his gauge on reality and unloaded on an entire Mormon family. Even killing the kids. It does not take a prophet to get the fact no one cares for this .Bronson befriends the Mormon family patriarch and a strange friendship starts. He first tells the man's father who then accuses his own brother. We then hop off to Glenwood Springs , Colorado where the local not so friendly sheriff points Bronson to the farm of the accused brother.After hitching a ride with one of the brothers many cousins , the accused brother accuses the brother who accused him. More back n forth than a washing machine in motion. Bronson doesn't buy it. The tanker truck that suddenly runs them off the road certainly makes the brothers doing it not wash. As Bronson digs deeper he finds the debutante of a very powerful businessman owns the tanker truck company.Back home in New Zion the brother has decided that when it comes to the violent murder of his grand children God can sit judgment out. After organizing his flock he heads to Colorado for a shootout with his brother. Bronsan warns the brother moments before a shootout begins and during the fire fight learns this piece of land has billions of gallons of water under it , that guess what some nearby water company has been dying to get their hands on , even with all the pieces he can't stop both brothers from killing one another .Afterwards , the tanker truck returns with its friends , and demolishes the vehicle Bronson Is leaving in. Back in Denver the chief of police is holding his first fundraiser via his old business partner Fox. After the death of a source and an earlier knife fight with the killer, Bronson comes face to face with the cutthroat again. After a brief struggle we get all the answers.Disclaimer : A Golan - Globas production. That's 80's film speak for B- Rate , but remember without these two you would never know who Chuck Norris is.I have to admit it was a good script no problem with it. The acting could be shaky at times and the direction clearly had a problem with achieving the psychological moods in scenes. There is enough here to pass a Sunday afternoon sometime but not much else.

For something completely different in a Charles Bronson movie, I recommend "Messenge of Death". Gone is a lot of mindless action, being replaced by an intriguing story line involving Mormons, greed, and a "who done it?" Having a good supporting cast, including Daniel Benzali (pre chrome dome), Laurence Luckinbill, and Trish Van Devere helps. Seems someone in Bronson's circle of rich and influential friends instigated a Mormon feud by slaughtering a family including children. As Bronson pieces together a conspiracy to acquire water rights from the Mormons, the movie holds interest. It is only the rushed conclusion that disappoints, leaving plenty of unanswered questions regarding motivation for all the killing?. - MERK

Easily skip-able Charles Bronson movie that starts out strongly but doesn't follow through. He unconvincingly plays a Denver reporter covering a case of a Mormon family living in the Colorado mountains who had nine members massacred, including five children. He then sets out to find the killer by visiting the eccentric community and finds that much of the evidence leads to a family feud between two brothers, along with ties to a water company. Why Chuck's character would feel so personally bent on dealing out vengeance when it's not his own flesh and blood didn't ever strike me as authentic. J. Lee Thompson directs (as usual) and manages to serve up some pretty scenery along with a good cast including John Ireland and Jeff Corey, but this is rather weak tea. ** out of ****

After a massacre was committed on a family of Mormons, newspaper reporter Garret Smith decides to dig a little deeper into the story, to only find out that there might just be more to it then just two feuding brothers.Another IMDb reviewer mentioned "Messenger of Death" is somewhat a change of pace for Bronson compared with his other efforts within this period, and definitely they got that right. Here it's a steely eyed Bronson doing a lot investigating and self-advertising his newspaper articles, than handing out much forcible punishment. Get ready for conversations and story development deluxe! Is more so a mystery set-up than action splurge. Actually don't fear, he gets 'some' hands on action. This Cannon presentation can't seem to escape it's cheap, and almost TV movie quality. However this wasn't a huge fault, but the main one was it promised so much to only fizzle out. The opening atmospheric musical piece, established by haunting chants sets the mood and the beginning sequence is brutally eerie and unsparing with director J. Lee Thompson's stylish guidance. After this well-implanted beginning, what we get afterwards is mostly lacklustre and anti-climatic textbook fluff. Too bad it has to go to waste, as Thompson shows scope, ace pacing and strings along the set-pieces with a beautiful Colorado backdrop captured by fluent cinematography, but breaking it down has got to be that the story can get too causal and unintentionally comical. The revelation to what's happening just comes off feeble, and lacking. Thompson does invoke few terse spurts of suspense throughout the rest of the running time with a rather inventive brush, but this notable sequence involving two trucks loses out to the same-old, same-old pattern. Robert O. Ragland's airy, uncanny tremble that features heavily in his persistent instrumental score is really well pulled off. The religious aspect is there, but more so a stepping stool for the story to play out then share any real light on the topic. Even the money hungry and corrupt side of business corporations finds some similarities between the two, where Bronson's character becomes "the avenging angel". At least Charles Bronson makes for an appealing protagonist and he shows some colour in his calculated performance, and the support cast chip in with very solid and somewhat ripe turns. Passable Bronson venture.