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So, Mr. Majestyk doesn’t exactly pass the Bechdel test, but it actually gets a bit of a pass from me. Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal) does play a pivotal part in the story, even if overall she has less to do than Megan Fox usually does. Still, Nancy and Majestyk are part of the circle of life in Edna, a (fictional) small southeast Colorado town that gets by mostly on the yearly melon crop and whatever else really small towns do to keep themselves from spontaneously blowing away in the wind.

Nancy and her friends are itinerant workers. Majestyk is an ex-Green Beret who after Vietnam, naturally decided to grow watermelons in the most unlikely place in which one CAN grow watermelons. Full disclosure - they actually DO grow watermelons in Colorado, just not in the parts of Colorado you think of when you think of Colorado. They actually filmed Mr. Majestic in that part of the state, and I guess if you want the complete opposite of the climate in Vietnam, Colorado isn’t a bad choice. So in that sense, sure. I can see it.

And that’s really one of the first things that stood out to me about Mr. Majestyk. Not only does it take a wild chance with setting and premise, but I expected it to have been filmed somewhere in southern California, which has been used as a cheap stand-in for just about every environment on (and off) earth. I was half expecting a chase scene under the sixth street viaduct bridge, like you see in 75 percent of all action movies ever made. But no, they actually went on the road with Mr. Majestyk, and it’s part of what lends this movie a weirdly inconsistent level of charm.

There’s an efficiently utilitarian quality to the production values of Mr. Majestyk, and it mirrors Bronson’s approach to the character. I’m not sure an actual expression crosses his face the whole damn movie - this is a salt-of-the-earth guy who has learned to take whatever life hands him, turn it over in his hands and make something useful from it. This most practical of men watches as the gas station attendant behaves contemptuously when Nancy and her companions ask to use the restroom. Majestyk steps in and insists they are allowed to be treated with respect, and he does not do it for self serving reasons.

He does it because he’s a badass ex-Green Beret/watermelon farmer who didn’t watch his buddies die face down in the mud so he can come back home to goddamn restroom racism.

Yes, I am being a little sarcastic. But...only a little. There are no explosions, no neck snapping, and no eye-rolling bon mots. Just a quick zip-up, a beautiful Mexican woman in high waisted jeans and a crop of melons that needs to be picked in five days or someone’s going to lose the damn shirt off their back. That is what prompts Majestyk to hire Nancy and her friends, that is what runs him afoul of a local protection racket, and THAT is the premise of the film. An Army Ranger-melon farmer who has five days to turn in his crop, but these assholes won’t let him.

They just messed with the wrong watermelon farmer.

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