Milano calibro 9 (1972, Fernando Di Leo)

After the craze of Spaghetti Westerns began to die out, Italy needed a new band wagon to hop on to, one that would resonate with the Italian people. 

Over in America, new Hollywood was in effect and gritty realism was the new bankable genre due to the rise in heavy street violence in major cities as an everyday occurrence. Films like Bullitt, Dirty Harry and The French Connection were the new fashion, even across the pond films like Get Carter and Sitting Target were now suddenly on the menu. 

But Italy was also no stranger to street violence and people flocked to the cinemas to see these gritty crime films, and the Italian studios new it. Hence, a new Italian sub genre is born, the Poliziesco, and loads of the Spaghetti western directors like Enzo G. Castellari, Sergio Sollima and Umberto Lenz were quick to make the transition. 

Director Fernando Di Leo had been a famed screenwriter within the spaghetti western genre throughout the 1960s with scripts like The Return of Ringo, The Brute and the Beast and Navajo Joe under his belt and had even directed a few pictures.  Then in 1972, Di Leo exploded onto the screen with this hyper action gangster drama (the first of his Milieu trilogy) which was needless to say one of the very best the genre had to offer.

With an absolute killer opening scene, here we witness a heist followed by a double cross involving $300k. Thereupon Rocco blasts onto the screen, played by the highly energetic Mario Adorf, as he savagely interrogates 3 suspected double crossers including an highly intense close shave scene at the barber. When no information is shed, the suspects are literally blown to smithereens at the hands of Rocco's rage.

With three years passed, we're then introduced to our protagonist Ugo Piazza, played by stone face Gastone Moschin (from The Conformist). He's only just been sprung from prison where Rocco, the head thug of the local king pin Mikado, picks up our hero as he's believed to have been the mastermind behind the missing $300k.

Ugo at first out right refuses to abide by Mikado's invitation, but after a second "invitation" to do so, his hotel room is ravaged and Ugo is forced to pay the damages without the financial capability to do so. After which he pays a visit to an old friend named Chino who has now dedicated most of his time looking after an old blind man (a previous king pin) who is happy to lend Ugo the money to pay the hotel damages but not to get involved. 

When Rocco and his men find Ugo in Chino's home, he grabs hold of the money and rips it, but then something happens, something which make us all scratch at our heads. Upon learning who Chino is, Rocco is forced to give back the money (clearly someone who has earned a great deal of respect in the under world) and upon Chino's advise he finally pays a visit to Mikado (or 'Americano' in the non dubbed version, played by veteran actor Lionel Stander) so as not to antagonise the situation any further.  

With Ugo now once again unwillingly working for Mikado, the film begins to focus on the inner dealings and violence of the mob with the police commissioner (Frank Wolff) and detective Fonzino (Luigi Pistilli, an veteran actor of some of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns including The Good, The Bad & the Ugly) trailing Ugo's every move to see if he's still up to his old tricks. From here on out up until the major shootout, well, let's just say it doesn't end well for most and with an ending that's as explosive as the opening. 

Asides from a great performance from Gastone Moschin and numerous others, not to mention a solid script, we get a very well crafted action thriller.  It almost seems as though Di Leo grabbed a Jean-Pierre Melville film, gave it some cocaine and served it up with some SpaghettiOs. 

The setting of these films were often very similar, they were usually set in Milan, with corruption being a constant under tone and jam packed with plenty of sex, violence and a few car chases to boot which almost always contained the usual suspects like the infamous Alfa Giulia Super and the Fiat 125.

Most people, weather they grew up with them or not may think of the sub genre 'poliziesco' as cheesy Italian knock offs, and in some cases they may be right. But with most of the early pictures (much like this one), they were hard boiled, rough around the edges and holding no punches, unlike the latter half of the '70s where the genre began to run out of gas.  In James Bond terms, Calibro 9 plays like an early Sean Connery 007 film, where as the Maurizio Merli films were like the Roger Moore 007 films, topped with the even more parmesan.

If you're a fan of those gritty 1970s crime films as I am, you might want to seek this one out.  


Rating: A-

Click here for the US trailer and here for the Italian trailer