Charles Bronson is the archetypal transient loner, stealing in and out of big cities aboard night trains, on a placid, vacant Panavision screen. This is a far-fetched ballad about he-man virtues, both physical and ethical, surviving in a difficult, debasing underworld — it's about Depression drifters pummeling one another for the bet money to be raised from bare-knuckle pick-up fights on the docks and in the warehouses of New Orleans, in the 1930s. Screenwriter Walter Hill, in his first directing effort, has the matter well in hand. He drums up the proper excitement for the man-to-man showdowns; he achieves a pervasive seedy look — sick-green walls and drab costumes, except for James Coburn's unaltered, always-in-the-pink confidence as a reckless gambler; and he demonstrates as well an alert look-out for the peripheral fascinations of a scene — a black kid's methodical sidewalk shuffle, the stalwart folk musicians at an outdoor country jamboree. With Jill Ireland, Struther Martin. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd