Bullet Points: Assassination
In Hollywood, if Charles Bronson liked you there was a good chance you’d get to work with him on multiple occasions.
That is why men like Ed Lauter, Martin Balsam and Robert F. Lyons were frequent Bronson co-stars and directors like Michael Winner and J. Lee Thompson were more often than not attached to Charles Bronson films. It makes sense, if you are going to be on set with people all day, it helps when those people are people you actually like.
So it is really no surprise that the one person Bronson worked with most, was the woman he loved… his wife, Jill Ireland. Bronson and Ireland appeared in more than a dozen films together, with their last being 1987’s Assassination…
- Welcome Back Killian: Charles Bronson plays veteran Secret Service Agent, Jay Killian. As the movie begins, Killian is returning from sick leave just in time for Inauguration Day and learns he has been assigned to One Mama (Secret Service code for The First Lady). First Lady Lara Royce Craig (Jill Ireland) is not your typical First Lady. She is brash, she is outspoken and doesn’t take kindly to Killian’s mandates believing he is using security as a guise for his male chauvinism. To say Killian and Lara get off on the wrong foot would be an understatement.
- Marriage of Convenience: Lara’s husband was in the United States Air Force years prior to becoming the President of the United States. But the future POTUS did not get out of the Air Force unscathed… quite the opposite, an accident left him impotent. History has taught us that a bachelor would never stand a chance at being elected President of the United States, so to keep his political dreams alive the future POTUS came to an arrangement with Lara (whom he had been romantically linked with) to marry him. Once he got into the White House, the deal was that the two would have a discreet marriage… but not everybody on the President’s staff was on board with this arrangement.
- Political Homicide: A member of the President’s inner circle, Senator Bunsen (Michael Ansara) realizes there’s no way a divorced President is going to be re-elected, which means no more power and glory for ol’ Bunsen. But a widowed President would be a shoe in for re-election! So before the POTUS can commit political suicide by going through with agreement with Lara, Bunsen hires two assassins to commit a little political homicide and take out the First Lady. After a few attempts on her life were thwarted by Killian and his team… Lara realizes the one person she can trust is Jay Killian.
- On the Lamb: The resourceful Lara orchestrates a scenario where she sneaks out of Washington D.C. …knowing full well Jay Killian will catch up to her before the assassins do. Fortunately for Lara it works and Killian escorts Lara on her journey to visit her father in Lake Tahoe. Killian is not a huge fan of the scenario, but he knows he can keep her alive and it buys his team some time to figure out who is trying to kill The First Lady. Killian and Lara find themselves on a Greyhound bus, an Amtrak train, a pair of motorbikes and even in a dune buggy before it is all said and done. If you know your Jill Ireland history you know in the past she had refused to play a character that died, so you can safely assume that Jay Killian and his team is able to keep The First Lady alive and well and eventually take out the power hungry Senator and his two hired guns.
Assassination traded some of the more gritty exploitative content found in previous Bronson/Cannon collaborations for big action pieces.. like when Jay Killian shoots a rocket launcher into a barn and blows it up or when the assassins blow up Lara’s family yacht.
Bronson’s character was less gritty too… yes, he was still a killing machine when he needed to be, but Jay Killian didn’t have the dark and tortured soul of a Paul Kersey or find himself hiding in a bottle like Jack Murphy.
These changes made Assassination one of the more unique entries in Charles Bronson’s Cannon career and while I can’t put this one on the same level as a Death Wish 3 or a 10 to Midnight or a Murphy’s Law, and the end of the day it was still an entertaining piece of business.
I’ve got some more entertaining business for you in the form of these Bonus Bullet Points…
- Rock the Cradle of Love: Bronson’s love interest in the movie is NOT played by Jill Ireland but instead by Jan Gan Boyd (Steele Justice) who plays a member of Killian’s team, Charlotte Chang.
- Memorable Quote: “I don’t want to die from a terminal orgasm.” – Jay Killian
- Familiar Faces: Fitzroy, Killian’s Secret Service boss, was played by Stephen Elliott who I will always remember as the Police Commissioner from Death Wish… The weasel faced tabloid reporter who tries to get The First Lady to admit that she and her husband don’t sleep together was played by Robert Axelrod, who I’ve seen pop up in numerous Bronson films including Death Wish 4: The Crackdown… Last but not least is Paul McCallum, who played Sandy in Assassination. Every movie Paul McCallum ever appeared in was a Charles Bronson movie and for good reason… Paul is Bronson’s step son.
