an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Action movies has been Charles Bronson's forte. "Murphy's Law" is no exception. In this movie, Bronson plays Jack Murphy, a boozy cop who gets set up, and cuffed to a potty mouth female convict(Kathleen Wilhoite). First of all, Murphy has his career going down the tubes when his ex-wife become an adult entertainer. That really sends him over the edge. Unbeknownst to him, when he follows her and her new beau, someone knocked him out, grabbed his gun, and killed her and her boyfriend at her place. It turned out the person who framed Murphy is no other than Joan Freeman(Carrie Snodgrass) one of Jack's first felons. She's on a revenge streak to take out all who has put her behind bars. The only partner Murphy has is the foul mouth Arabella McGee(Wilhoite). Since one cop was working for a mob boss(Richard Romanus), Murphy goes all the way to stop Freeman any way he can. Even though that Jack had started to drink earlier, he was able to sober up to help McGee in every aspect of the situation. He did take an ax to the stomach, but Freeman ended up "axing" for trouble on her own. This movie has a lot of action and suspense, but there was enough cheese factor to make it more comedic than dramatic. Great cast though. 2 out of 5 stars

Burnt-out Los Angeles cop (the kind who hides a flask of whiskey in his jacket pocket) is framed for the murders of his estranged wife and her escort; he assumes the hit was ordered by a local mafioso, but the killer is actually a female psychopath whom the cop sent up the river ten years ago and is now exacting her revenge. Better-produced than most of the Golan-Globus action-programmers of the 1980s, and star Charles Bronson is surprisingly energetic throughout, but this is otherwise pretty sleazy stuff. The illogical situations and unconvincing police scenario aside, Gail Morgan Hickman's screenplay is full of embarrassing, Z-grade dialogue (with an emphasis on homophobic slurs and bodily functions) which must have shamed veteran movie director J. Lee Thompson. An unusually strong supporting cast makes it tolerable, and the location for the film's final showdown is an interesting one. *1/2 from ****

Charles Bronson is Jack Murphy a hard drinking and an over the hill veteran detective who is mysteriously framed for the murder of his stripper ex-wife. Although taken into custody, in a desperate bid to prove his innocence Bronson escapes from custody whilst handcuffed to foul-mouthed car thief Catherine Wilhoite.(Whose wise cracks are a delight) Murphy must find the real killer who incidentally has a massive chip on her shoulder. The film has shades of 'Blade Runner' as it climaxes in an excellently staged shoot out at the famed 'Bradbury' building. 'Murphy's Law' is one of the Better films produced and released from Golan-Globus' 'Cannon Pictures'

Murphy's Law (1986) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Violent and foul-mouthed actioneer from Cannon has Charles Bronson playing a tough cop who is framed for the murder of his ex-wife and her new lover. The real murderer (Carrie Snodgress) just happens to be a psycho he put away years earlier but Bronson must break out of jail (with sidekick Kathleen Wilhoite) and prove his innocence. This certainly isn't high art but fans of Cannon and Bronson are certainly going to have enough to make this thing worth viewing. Not only do we have Bronson being his usual tough self but we also get some pretty graphic violence, outrageous fights, a strange killer, nudity and just all sorts of whacked out craziness. We get that type of thing in several Bronson titles but the original idea here is teaming him up with a female sidekick who just happens to have a very foul mouth and is constantly coming up with new insults to throw at the star. I'm certain the potty humor is going to make many role their eyes but Wilhoite is so good and delivering it that I found it rather funny. Even Bronson himself seems rather amused by it because he's a lot looser here than in many of these Cannon movies. He even cracks a smile a couple times and it almost seems like it was real. This is another winning character he delivers and he's everything we want from Bronson and that's just rough and he doesn't care about anyones rights. Not only does he have to track down this psycho female but he must also battle some gangsters and this here leads to one of the most outrageous scenes where he has to break into the apartment and beat the guy to a living pulp. Thompson handles the material quite well even though we never really get any suspense or anything like that. He at least keeps the film moving at a nice pace and things certainly never get boring even with the longer than normal running time.