Murphy’s Law benefits from a first-rate genre script by Hickman. In most of the Bronson / Thompson films it is the system of Patriarchy which is in collapse, forcing men to measure themselves up to it by their actions in the name of righteousness. But Hickman here takes that conceit and weaves into it a fascinating look at the role of women in this collapsing male order. Women here are thus not the usual victims in need of the paternal protection they are in the other films, although the aspect of paternalism is allowed to enhance the many bonds that Bronson begins to feel for Wilhoite in their joint captivity together. Indeed, it is because of what emerge as natural means of inter-connection that Bronson begins to feel an obligation for Wilhoite, his greater paternal responsibility awakened by his increasing humanism. Thus, Murphy’s Law is the one real note of positivism in the Bronson / Thompson films for it puts the character type Bronson usually essays through a process of ordeal which in turn forces upon him an awareness of humanistic inter-connectedness as much as it impels him to take the law into his own hands and suppress the threat posed by Snodgress. Indeed, as Snodgress has a vendetta against the men who had her committed, the premise is a nifty variation on the time-honored cliché that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The knowingness of this novel concept is wholly borne out in the film.
Hickman turns this idea of malfunctioning Matriarchal operations into a nifty generational analogy by contrasting the younger independent Wilhoite with the older Snodgress in terms of their reaction to the wholly imposing figure of Patriarchal authority which has affected their lives. Here, it is the vindictiveness of an independent woman, a Matriarch, which threatens to undermine Patriarchal authority and impels it into its crisis of affectation. Likewise it is this Patriarch’s sense of moral and paternalistic obligation to the younger woman which motivates him as much as the desire to purge his own image from the taint of wrongful incrimination. The tensions thus set up in this film nicely lend the plot a sense of urgency and conviction and the clever humor that Hickman injects into the script, particularly at the relationship between Bronson and the creatively foul-mouthed Wilhoite, ensures a lively and engaging film. But, as Thompson is well aware of Bronson’s image, he is able to fine tune the script to serve his own emerging themes, turning Hickman’s amusing variation on The Defiant Ones into a perceptive look at the paternalistic undercurrents which eventually humanize the Bronson figure. In so doing, Murphy’s Law emerges as humane, yet with a sense of patriarchal subversion also in place in the way Thompson deliberately plays up the idea of a dysfunctional substitute family comprised of Bronson, Snodgress and Wilhoite. read more