Bronson Gets a Blast from the Past in Young’s ‘Cold Sweat’ (1970) | Blu-ray Review

Terence Young will forever be remembered amongst the pantheon of James Bond directors, having helmed Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965). But his filmography following these titles yields an interesting, if uneven coterie of classic thrillers (the Audrey Hepburn staple Wait Until Dark, 1967) and a variety of obscured curios (including a number of camp items, such as Bloodline, a Sidney Sheldon adaptation which also featured Hepburn). Amongst these is 1970’s Cold Sweat, a French-Italian co-produced thriller which features Charles Bronson and Liv Ullmann as a married couple who are confronted by the secret, criminal past he barely escaped from a decade years (the pairing would end up being the first of three from Young and Bronson) and based on a novel by Richard Matheson.

Joe Martin (Bronson) lives a quiet life in the South of France with his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullmann) and twelve-year-old step-daughter Michele (Yanick de Lulle). renting boats to tourists. Suddenly, the couple finds themselves accosted in their home by a man (Michael Constantin) who calls Joe by a different last name, and so Fabienne learns ten years prior her husband had been involved in a crime with some of his past military cohorts. When the men unexpectedly murdered an innocent victim, Joe drove away, leaving them to face a prison sentence. Now, Captain Ross (James Mason) and his other stooges, including Fausto (Luigi Pistilli) and Katanga (Jean Topart), have arrived to claim a favor so they can use Joe’s boat to help them in a shady smuggling expedition, holding his wife and daughter hostage to get what they want.

As could be predicted, Bronson has little chemistry with the regal Ullmann, here reduced to damsel in distress mode. Bronson’s attempt at speaking French to the locals is akin to Brad Pitt’s purposeful Italian butchery in Inglourious Basterds (2009), while the narrative’s familiar genre tropes recall Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005).

What’s most interesting are the title’s casting choices, which include Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland as Moira, the supposed girlfriend of a decrepit James Mason (sporting a dubious South American accent) while Italian staple Luigi Pistilli has little to do but play a sinister heavy. Considering the source material was genre staple Matheson, Cold Sweat tends to disappoint in a predictable third act but it’s a pleasure to see these unlikely cast members thrown together for a familiar exercise, however clichéd.

Disc Review:

Kino presents Cold Sweat in 1.85:1 as one of its Studio Classics. Picture and sound quality are serviceable in this new Blu-release of the title, which used to be one of Bronson’s most widely available and circulated films. Kino includes an audio commentary track from film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson.

Film Rating: ★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Rating: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆