THE MECHANIC
US, 1972, 100 minutes, Colour.
Charles Bronson, Jan- Michael Vincent, Keenan Wynn, Jill Ireland, Linda Ridgeway.
Directed by Michael Winner.
The 1969 film "Hard Contract" asked, "What do the beautiful people do when they've done everything?" The answer was that they hired themselves out to kill. This film gives an extreme close-up of a professional hit-man, employed by syndicate bosses to eliminate unnecessary people expertly. Charles Bronson shows as a psychotic who mixes calm and thorough study of victims and technical method with potentially neurotic loneliness and breakdown. There is violence and some spectacularly contrived chases for the entertainment seeker, but there is a macabre and ironic flavour about the film which persuades us that this seemingly glamorous amoral life ends nowhere.
1. Was this an interesting thriller? What were its best features? Was it not only exciting, but interesting? Raising discussion questions?
2. The character of Arthur Bishop? Did the film make him attractive? Did the film show insight into his character? What kind of person was be? why was he a mechanic? How insane was he, psychotic? or was he merely a lonely individual doing a callous job? The symbolism of his physical illness and his hospitalisation?
3. Can you understand why people become professional killers? What is it in their makeup that enables them to do this cruel work? Have they consciences? Did this film help you to understand the mind of such a professional killer?
4. Comment on the filming of Bishop's elaborate tracking and understanding of his victim? How interesting was the filming of Harry? Why?
5. What were your impressions after his first actual killing, execution? Did this alter your attitude towards him?
6. Comment on his home, its beauty. its luxury. but the fact that he was quite alone?
7. The importance of his visit to the prostitute and his acting and her acting? Was he able to relate to anyone as a human being?
8. His visit to Harry Mc Kenna ? its seeming to show a human side to him, old times, Harry Mc Kenna and his relationship to his son, Harry McKenna? as a crook?
9. The way that Mc Kenna's death was filmed? The cruelty. the torture, the fear for Mc Kenna, the realisation that he was killed by a friend, but the fact that the murder could not be traced? Again the impact on the audience of this?
10. What were you first impressions of Steve McKenna? Was he an attractive character? Was he a parallel to Arthur Bishop twenty years earlier? Why was he so callous at his father's funeral?
11. How ugly was the showing of Steve as an understudy in killing? Why did Bishop need such companionship?
12. The Neapolitan job, especially when the truth had been realised?
13. The chase and the way it was filmed ? why?
14. The impact of Bishop's death. the realisation that he was to die? His discovery that he was the victim of a contract? His acceptance of this, the audience's thinking that he did not realise the risk, until the end? The callous cruelty in his death? Steve’s plugging on his one weakness. his having tracked Bishop as Bishop had tracked others? His weakness in not wanting to be alone?
15. The irony of the final explosion. vindictive revenge by a shrewd Bishop?
16. What insight into questions of morality did the film give of Mafia type contracts and organisations. of amoral beliefs of being beyond good and evil?
