Messenger of Death (1988)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

For something completely different in a Charles Bronson movie, I recommend "Messenge of Death". Gone is a lot of mindless action, being replaced by an intriguing story line involving Mormons, greed, and a "who done it?" Having a good supporting cast, including Daniel Benzali (pre chrome dome), Laurence Luckinbill, and Trish Van Devere helps. Seems someone in Bronson's circle of rich and influential friends instigated a Mormon feud by slaughtering a family including children. As Bronson pieces together a conspiracy to acquire water rights from the Mormons, the movie holds interest. It is only the rushed conclusion that disappoints, leaving plenty of unanswered questions regarding motivation for all the killing?. - MERK

'Avenging Angels' or as it is known as elsewhere ' Messenger of Death' is a modestly entertaining Charles Bronson film which goes to show that the over the hill legend still has what it takes, The superbly photographed eerie opening see's Wifes and children of the Mormon household become victims of a massacre. Bronson is Journalist Smith who is out to investigate the gruesome case and and finds out about economic motives behind the murders. Mrs George C.Scott 'Trish Van Devere' also stars as does western legend Jeff Corey as a seedy Patriarch. John Ireland also co-stars. all in all it is an entertaining and well made 'B' movie from J.Lee Thompson 'The Guns of Naverone' 'Cape Fear'

Well, this doesn't mitigate the sump that Charles Bronson found himself in in the 1980s but at least it's a variation on his them of hard-boiled avenger. Here, he's an investigative reporter for a Denver newspaper. He only fires a gun once, and at an empty coffin. He gets to beat hell out of a scowling would-be assassin -- twice -- but the blood is minimal. He never wrenches off anyone's head with a wisecrack and pees down the neck cavity. That has to be a variation, right? The story is pretty simple. The women of a rural family in Colorado are slaughtered along with half a dozen young children by mysterious visitors. Bronson is on the case. The patriarch, luckily absent at the time of the shootings, leads Bronson to an angry fundamentalist Mormon of the John Brown type -- all bulging eyes, stentorian voice, and over-sized gestures. That would be Jeff Corey. The massacred family was part of Corey's flock. Corey blames his brother, a balding John Ireland, who runs a huge farm nearby. Bronson intervenes when the two feuding families begin to exchange shots but both Corey and Ireland are offed -- not by their opposing clans but by outside snipers on a distant hill. Something like that anyway. Who cares? It made no difference to the screenwriter.Those distant snipers, it turns out, represent the Colorado Water Company. Water is precious in them thar hills. There's plenty of water to drink but far more has to be shipped in at great expense to provide the six barrels of water that the shale company needs to produce one barrel of oil. Ireland's farm is sitting on top of a huge aquifer that would provide all the water for a pittance but Ireland has refused to sell. "This is our land. We live on it. It's our home," and so forth.Well, you see, the Colorado Water Company WANTS that land of Ireland. To them, it's an emerald isle. So someone is trying to start a feud between Corey's clan and Ireland's clan in hopes that, with the land passing into other hands, the Colorado Water Company can buy it up.But who's behind it all? Bronson, through his newspaper, knows some of Denver's elite, including the owners of the Water Company. You can tell they're the elite because, at parties, they wear tuxedos, sip champagne, and nibble canapés instead of wolfing down Rocky Mountain oysters after a shot and a beer. But, although the chief miscreants are somewhere among them, it's hard to tell just who they are. There's the ambitious Chief of Police running for mayor. There's Laurence Luckinbill as a good-natured pal of everybody. And there are the owners of Colorado Water, the husband who gave the company to his wife as a Christmas present, and the pretty wife who seems to know nothing about managing the company.The film is more of a mystery than an action movie, and that's rather refreshing in itself. I mean, imagine, Bronson only slugging a snarling heavy twice and shooting a gun only once. Still there's a nifty scene of Bronson and his colleague, Trish Vandevere, almost being squashed between two eighteen-wheeled tankers. It's a familiar crisis though. I always find myself wondering why the driver of the car doesn't just stop his vehicle and let the two trucks keep going.If you or I were to make a "Charles Bronson Movie", we might do it exactly the way that Golan/Globus did. You begin with a sloppy screenplay that ends with a ludicrous climax. And you hire a director and all the principal actors who are over the hill, just sitting around somewhere in Tonopah, Nevada, living off residuals. They don't have to act, anyway, just say their lines and move along. It doesn't matter if, like Charles Dierkop, the patriarch of the slaughtered family, you can hardly act at all. What difference does it make when you're given nothing but stilted lines that avoid contractions in order to sound some Biblical resonance -- "We did not ask you to come; we do not ask you to stay; it is the Lord's angels who will seek out vengeance." Mormons don't speak like that, not even the polygynous fundamentalists who lived in Short Creek, Arizona, fifty years ago. Nor do they call themselves "Mormons." That's a Gentile appellation. They are LDS to each other. On top of that, Mormon angels don't have wings, unlike those shown in this flick. I suppose the writers avoided setting the story in the location we'd have expected, Appalachia, because the stereotype had become too familiar. So they created a new set of stereotypes.I was glad that the film gave Bronson a chance to wash the gunpowder residue off his hands and that we get to see some of Colorado's magnificently chilly scenery -- but what a sloppy job by all concerned.

A well renowned newspaper reporter, Garret Smith(Charles Bronson),for the Denver Tribune, writes an article on the slaughter of a Mormon family, soon investigating it. He discovers that the massacred family's patriarch, Orville Beecham(Charles Dierkop) is feuding with his brother, Zenas(John Ireland) over a religious separation, a change in doctrine which divided them to the point of hatred. Smith believes someone else hired an assassin to kill the family(which included seven children)and it could be over artesian water rights Zenas wouldn't sell to the Colorado Water Company because it was farm land going back generations. Trish Van Devere is the owner of a small newspaper company who also has familial ties to the Beechams and joins forces with Smith hoping to help uncover the culprits responsible for the murders of relatives. MESSENGER OF DEATH is a bit different than the usual Bronson fare for Cannon Group, his Garret Smith more of a peacemaker trying to keep two families from annihilating each other, almost successful until the hit-man returns to sniper shoot one of the Beechams instigating a shootout which leaves very little men left. Laurence Luckinbill(Sybock of STAR TREK V)is Homer Foxx, a big supporter for the mayoral candidate, Chief Barney Doyle(Daniel Benzali), and who has an uncanny ability to motivate charitable contributions from the wealthy elite. John Solari is the repulsive assassin who, at the opening of the film, unloads shot gun blasts into defenseless Mormon women without hesitation. Gene Davis(many will recognize as the psychopath Bronson is after in 10 TO MIDNITE) is the assassin's tag-along who wants to come clean to Garret..for a price. The storyline is a little more unique than what we are accustomed to seeing in an action vehicle for Bronson, although he does get to beat the assassin's ass at the end. There's a hairy, suspenseful near-death sequence for Smith and Van Devere's Jastra Watson when two huge Colorado Water Company trucks attempt to crash them. As she does once again, Van Devere's warm, pleasant presence adds quality to the film as does the old timers like Ireland and Jeff Corey(as Willis Beecham, leader of his family's village, moving his men to act against Zenas who he believes killed Orville's family). Smith treads lightly around his more aristocratic peers, two of which own the Colorado Water Company, and is a best friend to the Denver Chief of Police. I felt the major star of this particular film was the breathtaking Denver locations.