Customer Reviews

Cold Sweat

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Charles Bronson performance is riveting. The plot has big logical holes which reduces the entertaining value of the movie. The worst thing about this DVD is the video quality. It looks washed out from the beginning till the end. The ending scenes were too dark I could hardly see anything. It looked much better when it was re-run on the Movie Channel.

This is not the greatest Bronson movie ever made but it is nonetheless entertaining. It does have one spectacular car chase or rather motorcycle pursuit on winding roads of south of France. There are some nice perforamnces and it's fun to see James Mason play a villain although he's a likable one. Liv Ullman is fine and Jill Ireland plays a hilarious rich hippie chick.
There are the usual plot absurdities but Bronson is the reason we watch these movies and he's no different here. He's a very likeable tough guy trying very hard to be nice around bunch of incorrigable villains.
The main concern here though is the resolution quality. It looks like they transfered a video quality image. On a high def flat panel it looks aweful, but you can still enjoy the film. I wish they would remaster but I guess that's why the price is cheap. If image quality and DVD presentation are important then this should really get a 2 star rating.

A very tame story line. The movie drags on and lacks direction. Only for the "die hard" Charles Bornson "fanatics".

This spartan Charles Bronson crime thriller qualifies as an above-average actioneer about a tough guy who broke out of military stockade and managed to lay low for a decade. Not only has Joe Moran assumed an alias, but he has also married and has a stepdaughter. Moran was a sergeant in the U.S. Army who came back from the Korean war to Germany with his superior officer, Captain Ross (a mustached James Mason), but Ross could not stand the peace and got involved in the black market. Eventually, Ross and Moran wound up in the stockade together. Ross engineered an escape, but one of their comrades Katanga (Jean Topart) killed a German guard. They ended up in stir for ten years while Joe made a fast getaway. Now, Joe lives in the south of France and owns a chartered fishing boat. Ross and company escape from prison and go after him. They need Joe and his fishing boat to get a consignment of heroin off a ship flying the Turkish flag. Principally, Ross and his men take Joe's wife, Fabienne Martin (Liv Ullmann) and his 11-year old stepdaughter Michèle hostage to blackmail him into helping them. During a dispute the trigger-happy Katanga accidentally wounds Ross with a slug in the belly. Ross sends Joe to fetch a doctor while he holds the greedy Katanga at gunpoint. The villains in COLD SWEAT are sleazy through and through. Indeed, the villain create more chaos when they wind up shooting one another. At a crucial point, Katanga cuts loose with his folding stock submachine gun and shoots his leader, Ross, in the stomach. "Thunderball" director Terence Young does not let the action slow down. Once Ross has been wounded, he sends Joe out to get him a doctor, leaving behind the wife and stepdaughter of our hero. Bronson races into town and picks up a doctor. On the way out of town, our hero discovers that two motorcycle cops are fast closing in on him, so he guns the car and drives like a mad man. The renowned stunt driving team headed up by Remy Julienne give us a riverting chase scene, especially when our hero and his passengers plunge off the regular highway and careen across country! Ullmann has the best line in the movie when she shows her contempt for the former Foreign Legion soldier: "Killing him would not be murder, it would be like cleaning a cesspool." Of course, the tough but resourceful Bronson keeps surprising everybody, including two uniformed motorcycle cops. This crisp thriller is sometimes quite brutal as when the hero snaps a villain's neck with his bare hands. The British censors made the filmmakers cut out this scene as well as some brief frontal female nudity, and the death of a villain by a flare pistol. Terence Young never lets the action slow down and the car and motorcycle chase is pretty good. Charles Bronson delivers a charismatic performance.