Charles Bronson was a master of many genres, and he perfected the two genres that defined his career – westerns and war movies – within a single decade. Bronson is one of the most iconic “tough guy” actors in Hollywood history, and he starred in a wide range of different genre films throughout his storied career. Bronson’s career-defining role as Paul Kersey in the Death Wish franchise helped to popularize the vigilante thriller. He played a vengeful Vietnam War veteran in Mr. Majestyk, a Depression-era bare-knuckle boxer in Hard Times, and starred alongside Alain Delon in the French heist film Adieu l’ami.
But the two genres that Bronson is most closely associated with are westerns and war movies. Bronson’s badass charisma and intimidating screen presence made him perfect for roles as gunslingers on the frontier or soldiers on the battlefield. Bronson appeared in such westerns as Chato’s Land, Vera Cruz, and The White Buffalo, and such war movies as Never So Few and Battle of the Bulge. In the space of just one decade, Bronson starred in two of the greatest westerns ever made and two of the greatest war films ever made.
Charles Bronson Appeared In Two All-Time Great Westerns In The 1960s
Bronson kicked off the 1960s with a starring role as Bernardo O’Reilly in The Magnificent Seven. John Sturges’ classic western reimagined Akira Kurosawa’s seminal action epic Seven Samurai in a Wild West setting. Bronson played one of the gunslingers recruited to protect a defenseless town from an impending attack by bandits. Having been remade and homaged every which way, The Magnificent Seven remains one of the most acclaimed and influential western movies ever made. It maintains the rich themes of the Kurosawa original, but injects the story with Hollywood star power.
But Bronson wasn’t done revolutionizing the genre as he ended the ‘60s with a different timeless western masterpiece: 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West. Bronson plays “Harmonica,” a mysterious gunfighter who always plays his harmonica before a duel. Harmonica seeks vengeance against Henry Fonda’s sadistic villain, Frank, and will stop at nothing to kill him. Once Upon a Time in the West is arguably the most poetic and breathtaking spaghetti western that Sergio Leone ever helmed, and acted as a bittersweet swansong marking the end of the genre’s heyday.
Charles Bronson Was Also In Two All-Time Great War Movies In The 1960s
In between his two ‘60s western classics, Bronson also starred in two of the greatest war movies ever made: The Great Escape in 1963 and The Dirty Dozen in 1967. In The Great Escape, Charles Bronson plays the “Tunnel King,” a tunnel digger with severe claustrophobia, and in The Dirty Dozen, he plays German-speaking convict Joseph Wladislaw. Both of these movies defined a subgenre of the war film. The Great Escape is the quintessential P.O.W. movie, about a band of Allied soldiers teaming up to escape from an internment camp, and The Dirty Dozen is the quintessential guys-on-a-mission movie, about a bunch of ne’er-do-wells being sent on a suicide mission.