It begins with a series of exchanges of parcels. Clearly the parcels contain something illegal since those involved look very obviously like hoodlums. In fact the parcels contain money. This is a currency export racket. When all the exchanges are complete and the final parcel is opened it contains, much to the horror of the bad guys, stacks of blank paper. These criminals have been swindled. And they’re not happy. If you can’t trust criminals then whom can you trust? They take a terrible and blood-drenched revenge on everyone who might conceivably have stolen their money.
Three years later Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) is released from prison. The rumour in the underworld is that he was the one who stole the money, a rumour he vehemently denies. His problem is that the boss of the crime syndicate he was working for, a man known as the Americano, is convinced that Ugo took his money. And it’s not healthy for a man to have the Americano suspecting him of disloyalty.
Ugo gets beaten up. Not because he’s likely to admit his guilt, but because in this situation that’s what happens. You get beaten up. The Milan underworld is a very violent world. If this movie is to be believed Milan in the early 70s was like Chicago in the 20s only more so.
The Americano, having had Ugo beaten up again, gives him his old job back. Ugo has his own reasons for accepting - it will give him the opportunity to clear his name.
Ugo meets up with his old girlfriend, dancer Nelly Borden (Barbara Buchet) and they rekindle their affair.
Chino (Philippe Leroy) gets mixed up in Ugo’s troubles. Chino and Ugo are old buddies. Chino is a hitman but he’s an honest hitman! Chino looks after Don Vincenzo, who used to be the local godfather. Don Vincenzo is now old and blind and spends his time lamenting the fact that the Mafia just isn’t what it used to be.
What follows is a succession of incredibly violent episodes. Lots of beatings, lots of shootings. Then we get a series of twists at the end.
It sounds promising that there are problems. For starters the characters are loathsome. I just wanted them all to die. Lots of them do die but unfortunately it takes 100 minutes to accomplish this. There’s not a single character we can possibly care about. The police are equally repellant. The Commissario (Frank Wolff) is a tedious blistering buffoon. His second-in-command, Mercuri (Luigi Pistilli), treats us to a serious of excruciatingly heavy-handed political diatribes on the evils of capitalism. Then he gets transferred but he comes back to deliver yet another series of political lectures. The police shouldn’t be chasing criminals - they should be out on the streets protesting with the students and workers.
Then we get lots more violence, culminating in the most ludicrous shootout in cinema history.
I like Barbara Bouchet but she might as well have not bothered making this film. OK, she looks great dancing in that very revealing beaded bikini but apart from that she contributes nothing. Her part is appallingly underwritten.
Gastone Moschin is good at looking stolid. That’s all he does throughout the film. He does not change his facial expression once. OK, that type of minimalist acting can work in a crime thriller if you’re Alain Delon or Steve McQueen. You can come across as ultra-cool and icily obsessive. Unfortunately in this film Gastone Moschin just looks stolid. In fact he looks like he might well have been unconscious for most of the filming.
Mario Adorf as the Americano’s chief henchman Rocco makes up for this, giving a performance that ranges from mild hysteria to off-the-scale hysteria. Lionel Stander as the Americano is too hammy to be genuinely menacing.
Oddly enough for a movie with so much action and so much violence the results are a bit on the boring side. Some of the better giallo directors could get away with lots of hyper-violence by at least filming it in interesting ways but De Leo proves himself to be rather uninspired as a director. The violence just becomes wearying.
I’ll admit that the ending does provide a satisfying series of twists. And of course it provides more extreme violence. And I’ll admit that the opening parcel-exchange sequences are very well done.
Arrow’s Blu-Ray/DVD combo release is what we’ve come to expect from this company - a very good transfer with lots of extras. We get no less than three documentaries, one on the film itself, one on Giorgio Scerbanenco who wrote the story on which it’s based and one on De Leo’s career. De Leo is featured in the documentaries and he’s a guy who certainly has an optimistic view of his own talents.
If you like your crime thrillers to be extremely violent and extremely brutal Milano Calibro 9 delivers the goods on that count. If you like your crime thrillers to be stylish you may be disappointed. It’s a competently made film but it doesn’t quite have the visual inspiration you expect from Italian movies of this era. If you like tight plotting it has its moments but it’s not going to dazzle you. If you want characters you can care about, forget it. I’d suggest renting rather than buying this one. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it, but that may just be a matter of personal taste.
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