Tony Arzenta – Big Guns [No Way Out] **** (1973, Alain Delon, Richard Conte, Carla Gravina, Marc Porel, Roger Hanin) – Classic Movie Review 12,324

‘By mistake they killed his wife and child – THAT was a hell of a mistake!’ Yes, that’s the spoiler alert advertising, but the mistake is when the Milan-based mafia hitman Tony Arzenta tells his bosses he’s quitting the business, and, to quote the film’s American title, there is No Way Out.

Director Duccio Tessari’s always exciting, often thrilling, often violent 1973 Italian-French noir film mob thriller Tony Arzenta – Big Guns [No Way Out] stars Alain Delon, Richard Conte and Carla Gravina and was a sizeable box office hit, released in France on 23 August 1973 and in Italy on 7 September 1973.

Alain Delon plays an Italian mob hitman Tony Arzenta who leaves the family party for his young son’s birthday and carries out a kill. Fearing for his wife and son’s future, he decides it’s going to be his last and meets with his mob boss Nick Gusto (Richard Conte) and tells him he wants to retire. Gusto tells him he doesn’t think that’s a good idea as he knows too much about the mob, but he’d inform the other bosses and try to make it alright.

[Spoiler alert] That doesn’t go well and the other bosses decide to kill Arzenta, but ironically kill his wife and child by mistake in a car bomb blast when they take his car instead of hers. Arzenta sets out for bloody revenge in a quest that takes him from Milan to Hamburg and Copenhagen – and many shootouts and deaths ensue in a spectacular trail of mayhem and murder.

You could say the setup is familiar and the plotline predictable. Yes and no. In any case, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, and Delon and Duccio Tessari do it tremendously well, gleefully and lustily engaging in the pulpy material. It keeps you involved and on edge throughout, trying to guess the climax and payoff.

Tony Arzenta – Big Guns is directed with enormous relish and enthusiasm by Duccio Tessari on stylish locations including Copenhagen, Milan, Hamburg and Sicily with flavourful Seventies interiors. Delon holds the centre strong and compellingly, and rushes around nimbly, a very powerful physical actor who manages to say a lot with just a series of cold blank looks and expressions, though it is most an action role and little real acting is required. He’s good though. Conte and others, including Anton Diffring as the Copenhagen mob boss Hans Grunwald, are good value as the sleazy mob villains.

Carla Gravina is memorable as Sandra, the young woman who pays a high price for helping Arzenta. The graphic scenes of her being beaten up are shocking, along with a couple of other scenes of sadistic violence. That is well dodgy and so of course is having a mob hitman as a sympathetic hero played by a handsome star. The viewer is invited to take his place, go along approvingly with his vengeance trail, and all his killings. looking forward to the next one, and begging for him to survive and perhaps enjoy a happy new life with Sandra. Controversial, huh? Subversive maybe. These were violent times in the movies, though it was an era of great film-making, even in relatively humble genre fare.

Alain Delon dubbed his own voice in both French and English language versions of the film.

Delon previously and most famously played a hitman in Le Samouraï (1967).

The 2022 version on Netflix is the complete Italian 112 minutes version remastered in HD not the cut 95 minutes version.

The climactic wedding scene is shot at the incredibly beautiful Duomo, Noto, Syracuse, Sicily. The film is also shot on location in Milan, Paris and Copenhagen, and in  the studio at Dear Studios, Rome.

The cast are Alain Delon as Tony Arzenta, Richard Conte as Nick Gusto, Carla Gravina as Sandra, Marc Porel as Domenico Maggio, Roger Hanin as Carré, Nicoletta Machiavelli as Anna Arzenta, Lino Troisi as Rocco Cutitta, Silvano Tranquilli as Interpol officer Montani, Corrado Gaipa as Arzenta’s father, Umberto Orsini as Gusto’s right-hand man Isnello, Giancarlo Sbragia as Luca Dennino, Erika Blanc as prostitute, Ettore Manni as sauna owner Gesmundo, Loredana Nusciak as Gesmundo’s lover, Rosalba Neri as Cutitta’s Wife, Maria Pia Conte as Carré’s secretary, Anton Diffring as Hans Grunwald, and Alberto Farnese.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,324

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