Metacritic reviews

Except for some dutiful splattering of gore, it ticks along rather steadily, under Richard Fleischer's unruffled direction. There is a take-it-or-leave-it air that snugly suits the star's performance, or vice versa.

Hero, here, though, might be the wrong word (and I suppose it always was for Bronson's roles). After all, the film's tag line claims that Mr. Majestyk touches the hero in all of us and indicates that this melon picker didn't want to kick ass, exactly, no matter how adept he is at it, but that he was rather forced into it.

Bronson playing another strong man who would prefer not to have to kick as many asses as circumstances demand. Bronson is Vince Majestyk, a Colorado melon farmer who stands up against a criminal syndicate and the local law when he hires migrant day laborers to bring in his crop, rather than using the local mob’s drunken goons.

Fleischer handles a heavy script and most of the acting like no one should handle a melon; but he really soars into competence at moments of tension, car chases, and general cinematic escapism.

Somehow the filmmakers managed to take the subject of the mistreatment of migrant workers and turn it into a vehicle for displaying Bronson's violent heroics.

Mr Majestyk makes a first-reel pretense of dealing with the thorny subject of migrant Chicano farm laborers, but social relevance is soon clobbered by the usual Charles Bronson heroics, here mechanically navigated by director Richard Fleischer.

The twist of making Bronson a genuine working man adds interest to the action-revenge formula, but not enough to lift this out of the programmer category.

With a story that is absurd every step of the way, Mr. Majestyk is turned into a hodge podge of cruel and unusual punishments.