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**SPOILERS** Being contacted by a top Mafia hood, Cannavale, from his hometown of Naples Peter, Maricania, Yul Brynner, spending his retirement years fishing on the Brooklyn waterfront is told if he's interested to do one last hit on gangster Gennare Gallo, the man who murdered his brother. The hit on Gallo has of course nothing to do with Peter's brothers killing. It has to do with his hoods knocking off one of Cannavale's men at the Naple's trotter racetrack. The fact that Peter is told that he in fact did kill his brother makes Peter quickly get a plane ticket to Naples and check out Gallo's pad getting everything together to put the hit on him.
It just so happens that Peter soon runs into young and wanting to make it big with the mob Angelo, Massimo Renieri. Angelo tries to impress the world famous hit-man with his ability to pick winners at the race track. Peter at once realizes what a fake Angelo is when he sees his way of picking winners is. Hiding in a shack and shooting the soon to be winning horse with an air-gun causing him,or her, to brake and end up being disqualify by the racing officials. While the horse that he picks cruises first across the finish line! You wonder why Peter was so quick to pick this up Angelo's cheating and the racing officials, who for what seemed like months, who's job it is to spot these things couldn't? where they all in together in this scam with Angelo?
Gallo knowing that Peter is out to get him dispatches a number of his hood to get Peter. It's Gallo's boys who end up taking gas with two of them getting it in the Naples subway system, by being run over and killed, and one at a local cemetery who ends up being a resident there permanently. Another one of Gallo's hoodlums is himself done in by Gallo's right hand man at the Gallo estate for him screwing up the hit at the racetrack. That of the American mobster, with two of his associates ,getting shot that brought Peter to Naples to put the hit on Gallo in the first place.
The movie at first moves at a snails pace until we have a couple of exciting but mindless foot and car chase scenes as well as shootouts. We also have Peter getting introduced to Angalo's, by Angelo, girlfriend disco dancer Anny, Barbara Bouchet, who gets it on with the sexy hit-man and has a number of wild spins in bed, that were unfortunately edited out in the films and later DVD US release, with him. Anny is also beaten up by two of Gallo's thugs who attempt to kidnap her. There's also the always reliable to be a pain in one's butt, whenever he's in a movie, the overly annoying Martin Balsam as the Commissario. Who's alway getting in the way of Peters work, in and out of bed, and more or less makes an absolute nuisance of himself to everyone,including the audience, in the movie by just being in it.
After almost an hour into the movie we finally get what exactly Peter is planning and it has to do with the wet behind the ears Angelo. Angelo is, unknowingly, being groomed by him to take his place as a top hit-man. As you would expect the kid screws it all up by not being able to knock off Gallo as planned at a New Years party that has Peter, who at the same time knew that young Angelo wasn't up to it, suddenly and unannounced show up and do the job himself.
Were then given another, like so many before in the film, mindless chase scene with Peter, who was badly wounded by Gallo's bodyguard's, knocking off about a half dozen of Gallo's men with him ending up dead for all the trouble he went through. Not only to get Gallo but at the same time make a clean getaway. In fact it was the inexperienced Angelo who made good his escape and at the same time not reveal himself, like Peter did, to Gallo's men. Angelo didn't at all disappoint his dead friend and teacher Peter. Were given this twist ending that takes place at Peter's funeral that was about as surprising as a horse-racing aficionado finding out who won last years Kentucky Darby.
Actually Yul Brynner's last top staring role and for all the movies faults, which are many, he's really the only reason, with the sexy Barbara Bouchet's nude scenes cut out of the movie, to watch it.
score 5/10
sol-kay 27 December 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1557544/ |
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20-4-2021 06:06:06