Charles Bronson stars in this 1976 crime thriller. Bronson plays a former crime writer now living in a flop hotel (his concierge is played by perennial fall guy Elisha Cook, Jr.) stuck on a crime tome that doesn't seem to be coming. One morning awakened by his attorney, played Oscar nominee Michael Lerner, drops a job into his lap which he reluctantly takes; a prominent fixer, played by John Houseman, had important papers stolen from him & now is being blackmailed to pay for their return. Thinking it should be a walk in the park, Bronson goes to a laundromat to make the exchange but finds a body rolling in a dryer & a cop at the ready to arrest him. As the case drags on (w/a successful swap sans a missing few important pages), crooked cops, captains of industry & a money drop at a drive-in theater play into this enjoyable but overly busy plot (feeling like something Elmore Leonard started & dismissed) w/a non-plussed Bronson rolling along w/the proceedings. Co-starring Harry Guardino, Harris Yulin & Dana Elcar as cops, Jeff Goldbloom (who played one of the rapists in the original Death Wish) & Robert Englund as some punks, Oscar winner Maximillian Schell as Houseman's shrink, Jaqueline Bisset as Houseman's right hand woman, Dick O'Neill as a café owner, Daniel J. Travanti (from Hill Street Blues) as one of Bronson's confidantes & Val Bisoglio (Travolta's dad in Saturday Night Fever) as a low life.
