W I D E R SCREENINGS TM presents...
DVD REVIEW ARCHIVE
MESSENGER OF DEATH (1988)
MGM DVD (region 1)
d. J. Lee Thompson; pr. Pancho Kohner; scr. Paul Jarrico; novel. Rex Burns; ph. Gideon Porath; m. Robert O. Ragland; ed. Peter Lee Thompson; cast. Charles Bronson, Tirsh Van Devere, Laurence Luckinbill, Jeff Corey, John Ireland, Gene Davis (91 mins)
_______________________________________________________
The Reactionary Nihilism of Patriarchal Self-Loathing
Actor Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson formed a rather lucrative creative partnership at Cannon studios throughout the 1980s, making six films together in addition to the three they had made in the 1970s, before Cannon.
The middling Messenger of Death is their penultimate movie and one that was struck by production misfortune when Thompson became ill and the film was completed by the second unit director. There is enough thematic consistency with the other films, but Messenger of Death emerged as a lesser vehicle. The preceding films – 10 to Midnight, The Evil That Men Do, Murphy’s Law and Death Wish 4 – all brought Bronson’s well-known vigilante persona into a context which depicted the tensions of a malfunctioning Patriarchal order giving rise to reactionary violence to uphold a righteous sense of indignation at injustice and immorality. This would be continued expertly in the final Bronson / Thompson film Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. Together the films are a remarkable examination of what might be termed reactionary nihilism – the violent recourse to righteous action in order to preserve a Patriarchal tradition but by those unaware of how their actions posit them as exploding that tradition and transforming its purifying quality into a paradoxical moral quagmire from which there is ultimately no escape. Thompson is wholly ambivalent about this prospect and fills the films with both glee and outrage.
______________________________________
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Messenger of Death sees Bronson as a crime reporter (recalling the crime writer Bronson was in the first film he ever made with Thompson, St. Ives). The film begins with the mass murder in cold blood of a religious, Mormon, family by two strangers.
A religious drawing, of an avenging angel of death, is left at the crime scene. Bronson is assigned to the case and goes to the isolated retreat where it happened. There, he discovers that the grandparent of the victims is a leader of a devout religious cult of Mormons, gun-carrying all, who believe that the killing is the work of the anti-Christ, the cult leader’s own brother (John Ireland). With the help of a sympathetic woman (Trish van Devere), Bronson goes to see Ireland in the hope of learning more. In the process he learns about the violent mythology behind the cult’s beliefs and fears for the worst. The dead family’s sole survivor, the father, is imprisoned for his own safety but refuses to testify, feeling the matter best left for God to resolve. When he is duly released, he returns to the religious cult. Bronson visits them again and discovers that they are planning a violent reprisal. When the cult leader apparently dies of a heart attack in front of him, Bronson attends the funeral to discover that there is a ruse in place. He thus rushes to Ireland, fully convinced that a violent reprisal is being planned against him. However, he sees something which leads him to believe there is an outside conspiracy involved.
______________________________________
Regulating Patriarchal Self-Righteousness Through Violent Retribution: Vigilatism as Biblical Principle
Whereas in the other Thompson films, Bronson is directly involved in the expression of righteous, vigilante styled action in the name of Patriarchal authority, here he is a figure very much on the sidelines of that authority.
Rather than be directly affected, he is slowly pulled into an intrigue which need not concern him directly. The intrigue, albeit an absurd plot level conspiracy, represents Patriarchal greed gone wild, so much so that it is willing to exploit religious tensions to serve its own financial agenda. Once again Patriarchy is in turmoil, but the figure who can chastise it here, Bronson as a reporter and thus agent of the truth, is not a representative of it. Thus, Bronson here does not participate in the violence, the film casting him as a kind of commentator on it – a regulator. Thus, Thompson offers here an antidote to the crisis of vigilantism and moral relativism he sees in a crumbling Patriarchal order in the other Bronson films. Here, order and justice can be maintained by those outside the primary operations of patriarchal authority but with the responsibility to hold it into account. The way to do this is not by violent righteous action but by exposure of the means of corruption – the exposure of those who would take the law into their own hands to serve their own greed. In that, Messenger of Death is an answer to the questions concerning patriarchal authority and violence posed in so many Bronson films.
There are two contrasting Patriarchal rationales in Messenger of Death: one is the world of business enterprise and the second is the world of religious belief. Both are revealed to be inherently absurd and immorally corrupt as if any Patriarchal order is liable to be in conflict with itself.
Whilst for Thompson, this has led to the reactionary collapse of male authority into perversion; here he finds some hope in the Bronson figure as an outsider. Responsibility thus amounts to the need to patrol and regulate the operations of Patriarchal authority to prevent it collapsing in on itself and violently destroying itself. In previous films, Bronson was a direct participant in this Patriarchal collapse, but here Thompson and company place him outside it and through that device achieve a thematic and stylistic distance which allows them to thus expose the folly, greed and madness they see provoking corruption and reactionary moral fervor. Whilst never a full deconstruction of the Bronson / Thompson oeuvre, Messenger of Death is a direct comment on it, examining the same dilemmas from the position of some remove. Making much of the cultural contrast between Patriarchal systems, Thompson poses an almost irreconcilable gulf in contemporary society between authority and justice through which only the lone, peripheral figure can maintain perspective and arrive at some truth to put this authority into accountability for its actions.
______________________________________
Religious Community within the Detective Narrative
The visual transfer here is a capable anamorphic widescreen, preserving the film’s slick and accomplished professionalism.
Elegant use is made of autumnal colors and textures and the opening evocation of a beautiful and peaceful home works well to contrast the violent bloodbath that will happen within it. As is found in many Thompson films is a concern for the visual transitions between scenes. The “avenging angel” is a self-conscious motif and also an allusion to Bronson’s persona just as in this film he departs from it. Good use is made of a fluid, mobile camera and there is a fine sense of cult and community to the religious group, held in deliberate contrast to the society of rich affluence that affects it. The sense of cultural contrasts works throughout the film, a precursor to the sustained cultural clash in the later film of Kinjite. It is an accomplished film which seeks a perceptual distance from what is a quite misanthropic view of a malfunctioning patriarchy founded on violence and corruption. Thus, good use is made of how Bronson is drawn into this world and his actions as attempts to remedy not by further violence but by systematic journalistic exposure, the film thus becoming something of a detective story as it unfolds. Actions scenes are effective and there is a fine contrast between country and urban locations and the differing lifestyles and even ideological associations of both.
______________________________________
Sermonizing Motifs and Gender Difference
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital stereo surround, unlike the majority of other Bronson / Thompson films which are in mono.
That said, although the action scenes may be tenser in stereo the mix is such that it doesn’t feel that much fuller or diverse than mono, even if it offers some stereo perks in the spatial distribution of sound effects. Sound is fullest with the score, making nice use of choral effects replete with heavy religious overtones to bring out the plot aspects. Effective use is made of wordless killers invading the natural ambience of the home setting and there is a crisp, well-rendered sense of aural distinction to the religious cult, the various families and the few higher-class urban social circles through which Bronson moves as a knowing outsider. There is a sense of individual leadership rising above a group presence and much is also made of gender difference – between active men and passive women, Van Devere culturally between such perspectives. The score is increasingly sinister and malevolent as the many plot complications play themselves out. A good motif is made out of people sermonizing, so that such extreme faith is made to seem perverse and wholly threatening in its own right – and is nicely paralleled to the almost indifferent superiority of the rich business class. Differences in location and attendant lifestyle also work well to enhance the sense of cultural clash.
______________________________________
AMAZON.COM PURCHASE INFORMATION: Messenger of Death
AMAZON.CO.UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Messenger Of Death [DVD] [1988]
RELATED BRONSON-THOMPSON VIEWING SELECTIONS
