Want to know the best Charles Bronson movies? How about the worst Charles Bronson movies? Curious about Charles Bronson’s box office grosses or which Charles Bronson movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Charles Bronson movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst? Well, you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information.
Welcome to my Charles Bronson (1921-2003) Ultimate Movie Rankings career movie page. My first visit when I started researching Charles Bronson was to his IMDb page. I found that he had 160 acting credits from 1949 to 1999. That is over 3 projects a year for 50 years…a pretty impressive total. After throwing out 78 television performances and 12 uncredited bit parts that left 70 movies to research. I have ranked 61 of his movies from best to worst in this page.
So, I know what you are thinking…. where are the other 9 Charles Bronson movies? Well, I was unable to find box office numbers for 4 of his 1950’s quickie low budget films. And 4 of his movies he made in Europe from 1968-1972 never really got much of a release in North America….so they were not included.
This page will rank Charles Bronson movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Charles Bronson Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Charles Bronson Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Charles Bronson movies by the co-stars of his movies
- Sort Charles Bronson movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Charles Bronson movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Charles Bronson movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Charles Bronson movie received.
- Sort Charles Bronson movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Charles Bronson Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses
10 Possibly Interesting Facts About Charles Bronson
1. Charles Bronson(1921-2003) was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky.
2. Charles Bronson was one of 14 children born to a Lithuanian immigrant in Pennsylvania. Bronson started working in coal mines as a teenager before serving in World War II. He won a Purple Heart for wounds he received in combat.
3. Charles Bronson changed his name in 1955 due to concerns about the House Un-American Activites Committee(he thought it sounded too Russian). In some of his early successes like Apache, Vera Cruz and House of Wax he is listed in the credits as Charles Buchinsky.
4. Charles Bronson used the same approach to stardom as Clint Eastwood. Both started out in television, both went to Europe to make movies, both become international stars in Europe, and then both came back to the United States as stars. Bronson was actually offered the Man With No Name role in A Fistful of Dollars….but he passed and the role went to Eastwood. Meanwhile when Eastwood passed on Once Upon A Time In The West….the role went to Charles Bronson.
5. Roles that Charles Bronson turned down or was seriously considered for: Superman (Christopher Reeve part), Escape from New York (Kurt Russell part), A Fistful of Dollars (Eastwood part), Jaws (Robert Shaw part) and The French Connection (Gene Hackman part). The role that made Bronson a star in the United States, Death Wish, was originally written for Henry Fonda. Fonda was disgusted with the script and turned down the role.
6. Charles Bronson was married three times in his life. His marriage to Harriet Tendler(1949-1967) and his second marriage to Jill Ireland(1968-1990 her death) produced two children each. His final marriage was to Kim Weeks from 1998 until his death in 2003. He was the step father to David McCallum’s (NCIS) two children as well.
7. Charles Bronson and his wife, Jill Ireland, appeared in a total of 15 movies together. Besides her work along side of Bronson, Ireland is best remember as Spock’s love interest in the classic Star Trek episode…This Side of Paradise.
8. Charles Bronson was known as “le monster sacre” to the French movie going public. Le monster sacre means the sacred monster.
9. Here is a great trivia question…..Who is the only person to be a member of the Magnificent Seven and the Dirty Dozen…. not to mention he played one of the three roles that actually escaped the Great Escape….Mr. Charles Bronson.
10. Check out Charles Bronson’s career compared to current and stars of the past on my Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time Table.
10A. The missing 9 Charles Bronson movies: 1954’s Crime Wave, Tennessee Champ. 1955’s Big House USA, Target Zero. 1958’s Showdown at Boot-Hill, Gang War, When Hell Broke Loose, 1970’s Lola, You Can’t Win Them All. 1971’s Someone Is Behind the Door. I will continue to search for some North America box office numbers for these movies so they can be included in this page.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
I just saw that you have updated your Charles Bronson page!
Excellent Bruce.
I was watching Happy Days for Garry Marshall.
Charles Bronson is of course a man whom I consider to be the REAL Alpha Male in The Magnificent Seven because while McQueen and Brynner – two of my all-time favourites – were dividing the cast about which they thought was sexier-
Bronson went off by himself or stayed with the children.
He was a very private man who did not write an autobiography.
And he was very protective of other people’s privacy.
If Charles Bronson is in a movie, I want to see it.
I do not care if it is 2 star or 5 star.
Charles Buchinsky indeed.
Of course, lately here are the 4 Bronson films I watch the most often in no particular order:
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Magnificent Seven
The Great Escape
The Dirty Dozen
He really was a hero in terms of the man he was off screen as well as on screen.
He turned down the part of superman? I was reading an interview with Michael winner and he said that Charlie also turned down the part as quint who was played by Robert shaw in jaws as bronson thought a movie about a rouge shark was all a bit silly and it would have flopped.
Hey Peter….I will have to add Jaws to the list of movies he turned down. Hard to blame him….not thinking anybody saw the huge success coming when they were making Jaws. I think everybody that was working in Hollywood turned down Superman…lol. Thanks for stopping by.
I think the Best Charles Bronson movies were the Death Wish Movies. These movies May have lead to the creation of Dexter. He did a Great job in them. I also like The Dirty Dozen.
Hey Tim….the Death Wish movies made Bronson a superstar…interesting point about Death Wise being related to Dexter….makes sense to me. Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Death Wish, Once Upon A Time In The West and The Magnificent Seven are my Top 5 Bronson movies…thanks for stopping by and checking out my Bronson page.
Hi, Bruce.
Now that I have caught up with the recent pages written on classic era artists, I have gone back to your site index to look for names that interest me which I had not yet done. Sometimes names actually had comments from that other site which shall remain unnamed here, but others were more recently done but I could not remember, so I check older comments to see how old the page is and whether I made a comment.
Charles Bronson is a name that I was missing. I am indeed a Charles Bronson fan. He was in a lot of all star films that I have seen and that made me interested in him.
Regarding the missing movies. I noticed that Guns of San Sebastian is on that list because I saw that earlier this year and it is included on Quinn’s page.
The highest rated movie I have seen is Number 1: The Dirty Dozen.
The highest ranking movie I have not seen is Number 10: Drumbeat.
The lowest ranking movie I have seen is Deathwish V, second last. I saw all of the DW in a marathon.
Viewings By Rankings:
I have seen all of the top 5 movies.
I have seen 9 of the top 10 movies.
I have seen 12 of the top 15 movies.
I have seen 15 of the top 20 movies.
I have seen 20 of the top 30 movies.
I have seen 25 of the top 40 movies.
I have seen 28 of the top 50 movies.
I have seen 30 of the 57 movies listed .
My top five movies are:
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Magnificent Seven
The Great Escape
The Dirty Dozen
Never So Few
Cheers,
Flora
Wow….talk about good timing. Just got a comment with box office information on a Randolph Scott movie….Riding Shotgun which also starred Charles Bronson…..so after updating that page I was headed here to update this page with three Bronson movies not already on the page….now I just have to figure which three movies are missing. I will return to your comment after I get the Bronson movie table up to 60…so I can completely mess up your %…lol.
Actually it was only two new movies for this page…Riding Shotgun and Guns for San Sebastian (through my recent Quinn page)….I think I added Villa Rides a few months ago.
😉
Hey Flora.
1. Thanks for checking out my Bronson page.
2. Through 5 years and 3 websites…I get very confused about where I wrote the page originally….I thinking I wrote this one on HP….but near the end of my time there. I know it was not the new website. So if I get confused then I can see why it is confusing for you and others.
3. The second website was called CogersonMovieScore….but Google for some reason stopped liking my pages…..the only way you could find them was to type in “Cogerson Movie Score Charles Bronson Movies Ranked” into Google Searches….and it would pop up. Not surprisingly not many people searched the internet being that specific in searches….but now Google likes this website….sorry….I think I just went off on a tangent.
4. I am surprised you gave Steve such a good run for the money….he is at …or was at 37…you are at 30…. I am at 15…..Steve wins but it was much closer than I would have thought.
5. Guns of Sebastian…just got added to the page today….it was on my list of things to do….when I got a box office number for the Quinn movie…now down to 10 to find.
6. I am unaware of Drumbeat….looks like it did well at the box office…..but a 48.5% is a very low audience/critic rating….I am going to do a page on Alan Ladd soon.
7. Your %…90%. 80% 75%…and then only 40% of the final 37 movies…..seems my ranking system seems pretty good…as the cream always seems to rise to the top.
8. I have seen all of your Top 5…..with Once Upon A Time in The West and Great Escape being two of my all-time favorite movies. I have seen Never So Few….but it was so long ago that I can barely remember the movie…probably time for a revisit. Checking my handy dandy red notebook that I used in the 1980s….I saw it in 1987 and gave it 3 out of 4 stars….my only real memory of the movie is McQueen with a machine gun….no memory at all of Bronson in the movie.
9. As always…thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on Charles Bronson….sorry I messed up your %…see the other comments.
I’ve never understood why Once Upon a Time in the West made so little money in North America.
Personally, I bounce back and forth between the Good, the Bad and the Ugly and OUTW as which I love more. Everyone I know who has ever seen OUTW have really liked it. It’s certainly my favorite Bronson film. Though I also really enjoy The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, Hard Times, Death Wish and will always have a special place for From Noon Til Three. I had high hopes for Telephon directed by Eastwood director and mentor, Don Siegel, but was a bit disappointed. Maybe it’s time to revisit it.
During the 70’s the media portrayed the big tough guy box office battle between Bronson and Eastwood. In 1971 Eastwood was crowned the biggest box office star in the world. In 1972 Bronson was awarded that honor, while Eastwood scored the Quigley’s top box office star in North America. Bronson slowly climbed the ranks of the Quigley Poll, #27 in ’72 – #8 in ’73 – #7 in ’74 – #4 in ’75, topping Eastwood for the first time, who had slipped to #6. By 1976 Bronson had dropped out of the top ten, #12, and never recuperated.
Looking over your charts brings back memories.
Was Once Upon a Time in th WEst made in N.A.? I don’t think so. I think it was made in Italy.
I think that because it has American actors you think it was filmed in US, similar to how a lot of US films are actually filmed in CAnada due to scenery.