Framed for his ex-wife's murder, disgraced cop Murphy (Charles Bronson) escapes arrest to go on the run.
Cuffed to car thief McGee (Kathleen Wilhoite), he is in a race against time to figure who is trying to destroy his life.
I was surprised at how relatively restrained 10 to Midnight was considering it was a Cannon film.
Murphy Law feels more of a piece with the studio that made American Ninja and Ninja III - The Domination. It is not nearly as over-the-top as those movies, but this movie feels a little more chopped up, with little breathing room between the set-pieces.
This is not a bad thing.
As with that previous film, this marks an interesting attempt at toying with the star's rugged persona. Indeed, it might be a more radical film - at least in terms of the Bronson films I have seen thus far.
When introduced, Bronson's Jack Murphy is something of a failure - while he foils McGee's attempt to steal his car, the vehicle is a write-off, and no one at work respects him.
He is an alcoholic, and spends his off-hours sitting at the club where his ex-wife (Angel Tompkins) dances. This character is completely disempowered.
It helps that Bronson is as old as he is - it helps play into the sense that Murphy is completely spent.
Another interesting aspect of the film is that Bronson's antagonist is a woman, Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress). The character is a familiar archetype - a vengeful ex-con - plays with gender expectations. Freeman is capable of brutal acts of violence, but she is also willing to use her body as a weapon of seduction to lure in one particular victim.
The most intriguing of the film's subversions - and the one that is ultimately the least interesting (?) is McGee. Played by Wilhoite with a childlike androgyny, she is the polar opposite of her co-star. It is hard to work out how old the character is supposed to be, but as written and performed she comes off as a petulant teenager.
This is no discredit to Wilhoite, but the character feels like it has been written by much older men trying to work out how eighties youth talk. Her antagonistic relationship with Murphy is believable in the early stages, but her constant stream of insults starts to feel repetitive. The film clearly wants to build toward some kind of rapport between the pair, but the actors are failed by sloppy writing.
At one point, McGee questions Murphy's manhood, and in a disconcerting moment, lets slip that she would be interested. This shift comes way too late in the picture, and is never referenced again. Was it a re-write? An appeal to the star's vanity? It is a bizarre moment, and one that undermines the intriguingly non-sexual bond between the characters.
Despite these ingredients, Murphy's Law remains a slight disappointment. It is watchable, and Bronson's sad sack is fascinating, but the film is a little too on rails to make more of its more unique features.
An intriguing, though still-born potboiler.
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