I've never thought that those two were homos.It was a teacher-student relationship.It's like saying that Rambo-Trauntman
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Mechanic
kfcdou88 — 17 years ago(July 16, 2008 03:22 AM)
I've never thought that those two were homos.It was a teacher-student relationship.It's like saying that Rambo-Trauntman,Rocky-Micky(and later Apollo) were all homos.
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chazbro61-790-208190 — 10 years ago(December 08, 2015 11:10 AM)
You,sir,are an idiot.I didn't know where else to reply to your review on Murder on the Orient Express and your statement that the producers missed an opportunity at a gay sub plot.I have never heard anything more absurd in my whole life.Its not enough that we have allowed the gay lifestyle into mainstream society,now if it isn't mentioned or portrayed in a movie,someone gets offended.well,I for one,don't need to be reminded every time I turn on the tv,that some people choose to have sex with the same gender,and how utterly disgusting that is to a majority of people.Agatha Christie would spin in her grave if they used an adaptation of one of her books to promote something she was vehemently against.
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mazaldivar — 16 years ago(July 16, 2009 12:50 AM)
Anytime a movie depicts a close relationship between two men it will usually get looked upon as "homosexual" by some critic trying to be clever.
It's usually a load of hogwash.
I don't see any homosexual undertones in this film at all. -
robbwolf — 11 years ago(April 30, 2014 12:01 PM)
Charles Bronson is my favorite movie star and I have seen THE MECHANIC several times over the years. The last time I saw it was two years ago with a couple of friends and we'd all seen the film many times. When Charles Bronson and Jan Michael Vincent first meet, I suddenly realized what was going on and said, "Oh beep Bronson's gay" To which my friends responded immediately, "Oh beep you're right!!"
They're gay but it's very subtle. Jan Michael Vincent was shot and framed the way a sexy girl would be. Watch the scene again. That scene is the indication that they're gay and after you realize it, everything else falls in to place. You see them both with women because they're in the closet and clearly aren't connected.
Remember that in the 70's being gay was still very taboo. Gay men in the 60's and 70's were almost always portrayed as limp wristed, lisping and some times even carrying purses. When they weren't portrayed that way it was usually very subtle. In THE MECHANIC it's so subtle that most people who see this film will never pick up on it and it's possible that Bronson and Vincent might not have even known that their characters were gay. Unlikely though. Bronson was a much more sophisticated man than his screen persona would suggest.
I should close by saying that my friends and I all suspect that the DVD we were watching may have been a slightly different cut. -
David_Blue — 14 years ago(February 18, 2012 07:29 AM)
I think a possible gay angle is worth thinking about, but ultimately the answer is no.
In the 1970s, it makes sense to me that if Arthur Bishop's mob bosses though he had taken on a pupil for gay reasons, they would regard that as "self-indulgent" and then decide to order his pupil to hit him, and then hit his supposedly gay pupil too.
Also, both Arthur and Steve have terrible relationships with women. Which raises homosexuality as a possibility.
Ultimately I think this is wrong for Steve, because Steve is ice-cold to everyone. It's not that he's smugly indifferent to his girlfriend's death because he needs to love a man; he just doesn't love. Nor does he want love. And when he wants sex, which is apparently not often, a girl relieves his tension well enough.
Arthur does want love, even a warped father and son love from Steve. That's his fatal weakness. But I don't think he's gay, just desperately lonely, and getting past the age where he can bluff his way through his emotional problems by being tough.
The scene with the prostitute is very strong. That's the part of the movie that when I saw it gave me a complete assurance that this would be an outstanding film. Arthur wants the kind of relationship with a woman that he was paying the prostitute to fake, and he was bitter because he couldn't really love and be loved, and his life was nothing like the fantasy he paid for. So he's not gay.
Instead of there being a gay issue, I think there's a strong fathers and sons theme. Steve and Arthur's fathers, both criminals, had unsatisfactory relationships with their children, each apparently having just a single son. The sons are so messed up in relationships that they never have any children at all, nor do they come close. The boss at his home isn't really fatherly with Arthur, or if he is it's a very bad, treacherous "father". And Arthur's effort to set up a pseudo father-and-son relationship with Steve is a fatal mistake.
This all shows a part of a subculture, a criminal subculture, that's privileged in a material sense, and even skilled in an obvious tough-guy way, but as for being able to live a human life and reproduce itself, it's in total emotional and moral collapse. To me that fits a 70's sense that things had gone wrong emotionally and spiritually, even though American society was still very rich and powerful in a material sense. The rules weren't working any more, or they weren't accepted. People had become detached from the rules. Rethinking was required. But Arthur and Steve weren't the guys to do this rethinking. -
jmix66 — 9 years ago(December 26, 2016 05:32 AM)
If we are to believe Michael Winner's statements that teh original script was too "gay" to be acceptable to many actors at the time (and there's no reason not to believe it) then we can also assume that the changes made to the script were more "additions" than the simple "subtractions." Those additions (the prostitute and the girlfriend)still could not overcome the inherent "gayness" of the narrative.
The "father/son" angle only works if the two had a prior relationship and then it evolved into one like that. The film never addresses this and as a result, the homoerotic undertones prevail throughout.
Bad films are a crime against humanity.
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