BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Stephen Abell This is a wonderful slice of the '80's and I was only too pleased to watch this again. The story is actually a whodunnit as a group of Mormon women and children are massacred, a couple of the religious factions are blamed for the incident. Especially when one of the factions believes that by killing some of their congregation they are helping them to find enlightenment in the afterlife.This is where Bronson as hardened reporter Garret Smith comes into the story. He starts to investigate the murders and what he finds sets him and the people around him on a dangerous path to the truth. Let me start by saying that I admire Bronson as an actor, though when he signed to the Cannon/Golan-Globus deal they wanted him as the hardman. So when he's in Death Wish he's an architect... though you definitely wouldn't want to get on his mean side, when he goes for revenge. The same can be said here. Even though he's a reporter he holds himself in a way that says, don't mess with me! That aside, as with all his films, he still puts in the acting skills he's acquired over the years and is always a pleasure to watch. He was one of my Dad's favourite actors and I'm glad he introduced me to his films. What you get in this film is plenty of action and above average acting. In fact, there are quite a few good actors in this flick including, Laurence Luckinbill, Daniel Benzali, Jeff Corey, and John Ireland. It's also nice that the guilty party is not revealed until the last minute. The writer and director do a decent job of weaving your thoughts and the suspects together in a way that you're never really sure. However, the ending is a little strange - I would have written it differently, though the sudden ending really does work well with this style of movie.My favourite thing about this was the car and truck chases, that had a reminiscent feel of Spielberg's Duel. I doff my hat to the stuntmen and drivers in these scenes. These are real vehicles with real stunts and explosions - nothing is CGI.If you like an entertaining action film with a hint of a whodunnit then this film should be right up your street, as long as your not being chased down by a Semi-truck. If you were wondering what was so special about the '80's then this will enlighten you, especially since it's a Cannon / Golan-Globus Movie - it just couldn't get better.

merklekranz 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

Robert J. Maxwell Well, this doesn't mitigate the sump that Charles Bronson found himself in in the 1980s but at least it's a variation on his them of hard-boiled avenger. Here, he's an investigative reporter for a Denver newspaper. He only fires a gun once, and at an empty coffin. He gets to beat hell out of a scowling would-be assassin -- twice -- but the blood is minimal. He never wrenches off anyone's head with a wisecrack and pees down the neck cavity. That has to be a variation, right? The story is pretty simple. The women of a rural family in Colorado are slaughtered along with half a dozen young children by mysterious visitors. Bronson is on the case. The patriarch, luckily absent at the time of the shootings, leads Bronson to an angry fundamentalist Mormon of the John Brown type -- all bulging eyes, stentorian voice, and over-sized gestures. That would be Jeff Corey. The massacred family was part of Corey's flock. Corey blames his brother, a balding John Ireland, who runs a huge farm nearby. Bronson intervenes when the two feuding families begin to exchange shots but both Corey and Ireland are offed -- not by their opposing clans but by outside snipers on a distant hill. Something like that anyway. Who cares? It made no difference to the screenwriter.Those distant snipers, it turns out, represent the Colorado Water Company. Water is precious in them thar hills. There's plenty of water to drink but far more has to be shipped in at great expense to provide the six barrels of water that the shale company needs to produce one barrel of oil. Ireland's farm is sitting on top of a huge aquifer that would provide all the water for a pittance but Ireland has refused to sell. "This is our land. We live on it. It's our home," and so forth.Well, you see, the Colorado Water Company WANTS that land of Ireland. To them, it's an emerald isle. So someone is trying to start a feud between Corey's clan and Ireland's clan in hopes that, with the land passing into other hands, the Colorado Water Company can buy it up.But who's behind it all? Bronson, through his newspaper, knows some of Denver's elite, including the owners of the Water Company. You can tell they're the elite because, at parties, they wear tuxedos, sip champagne, and nibble canapés instead of wolfing down Rocky Mountain oysters after a shot and a beer. But, although the chief miscreants are somewhere among them, it's hard to tell just who they are. There's the ambitious Chief of Police running for mayor. There's Laurence Luckinbill as a good-natured pal of everybody. And there are the owners of Colorado Water, the husband who gave the company to his wife as a Christmas present, and the pretty wife who seems to know nothing about managing the company.The film is more of a mystery than an action movie, and that's rather refreshing in itself. I mean, imagine, Bronson only slugging a snarling heavy twice and shooting a gun only once. Still there's a nifty scene of Bronson and his colleague, Trish Vandevere, almost being squashed between two eighteen-wheeled tankers. It's a familiar crisis though. I always find myself wondering why the driver of the car doesn't just stop his vehicle and let the two trucks keep going.If you or I were to make a "Charles Bronson Movie", we might do it exactly the way that Golan/Globus did. You begin with a sloppy screenplay that ends with a ludicrous climax. And you hire a director and all the principal actors who are over the hill, just sitting around somewhere in Tonopah, Nevada, living off residuals. They don't have to act, anyway, just say their lines and move along. It doesn't matter if, like Charles Dierkop, the patriarch of the slaughtered family, you can hardly act at all. What difference does it make when you're given nothing but stilted lines that avoid contractions in order to sound some Biblical resonance -- "We did not ask you to come; we do not ask you to stay; it is the Lord's angels who will seek out vengeance." Mormons don't speak like that, not even the polygynous fundamentalists who lived in Short Creek, Arizona, fifty years ago. Nor do they call themselves "Mormons." That's a Gentile appellation. They are LDS to each other. On top of that, Mormon angels don't have wings, unlike those shown in this flick. I suppose the writers avoided setting the story in the location we'd have expected, Appalachia, because the stereotype had become too familiar. So they created a new set of stereotypes.I was glad that the film gave Bronson a chance to wash the gunpowder residue off his hands and that we get to see some of Colorado's magnificently chilly scenery -- but what a sloppy job by all concerned.

Bolesroor As a fan of Charles Bronson it pains me to have witnessed the disaster that is "Messenger Of Death," a "movie" so insipid and poorly-made that all existing prints should be destroyed for the good of mankind.The movie seems to have been shot in seven days, with turgid acting, embarrassing direction, and a laughable script. The soundtrack works overtime trying to add dramatic tension to scenes of Bronson making small-talk, which makes up the bulk of the movie. No beats, no highs or lows, no plot, no characters, no action sequences, no suspense, no comedy, no adventure, nobody can do the BOOGALOO like I do! (Sorry, I got sidetracked.)In conclusion, avoid this movie at all costs. It is a steaming pile of rhinoceros dung with no redeeming value whatsoever. You've been warned.GRADE: F