Violent City [Città violenta] *** (1970, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jill Ireland, Umberto Orsini, Michel Constantin, Ray Saunders) – Classic Movie Review 9831

Director Sergio Sollima’s 1970 Italian-French urban crime thriller Violent City [Città violenta], stars Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Telly Savalas. It opens with an impressive car chase sequence on the island of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and motors along excitingly from there.

Set and shot in New Orleans, it has hitman revenge plot. Bronson plays professional assassin Jeff Heston, Ireland plays his mistress Vanessa and Savalas is Al Weber, the crime boss who framed Heston and took Vanessa as his mob wife.

Heston is double-crossed by Vanessa and left for dead in a murder attempt in the Virgin Islands, but then recovers and sets out to New Orleans for revenge on Vanessa and Weber.

Città violenta was distributed in the United States first by International Co-Productions, and later in wider release by United Artists, retitled The Family, and cut by eight minutes. This footage been restored by Anchor Bay Entertainment on DVD but, because these scenes were never dubbed into English, they are in their original Italian language with English subtitles.

Quentin Tarantino, a fan of Sollima’s The Big Gundown, used samples from Violent City’s Ennio Morricone score in his 2012 film Django Unchained.

Nicolas Winding Refn said it is one of his favourite Italian genre films.

Also in the cast are Umberto Orsini, Michel Constantin, and Ray Saunders.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9831

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com