Jan 20 2012
Cinema Narcs Review: “The Family” AKA “Violent City” (1970)
MOVIE - “The Family” AKA “Violent City”
DIRECTOR – Sergio Sollima
WRITERS – Massimo De Rita, Dino Maiuri (story ); Gianfranco Calligarich, Sauro Scavolini, Sergio Sollima, and Lina Wertmuller (screenplay)
SIX DEGREES OF CAST & CREW
‑This movie has been released multiple times in the United States alone. In 1970, it was released as Violent City, the translated Italian title. In 1973, the movie was edited and rereleased as The Family in an attempt to piggyback onto the organized crime craze kicked off by The Godfather a year earlier. To further complicate matters, the 1973 release by United Artists cut 8 minutes from the film. On the DVD release, the 8 restored minutes were never dubbed back into English, so are presented in Italian with subtitles. Speaking of subtitles, Bronson was born to Lithuanian parents and, as a child, only spoke Polish; he didn’t learn English until he was a teenager. Bronson’s Polish language skills and his claustrophobia were both on display in The Great Escape, in which Bronson plays a Polish POW nicknamed The Tunnel King due to his claustrophobia.
‑This is a movie of connections. It is the third and final pairing of Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson (the others being Battle of the Bulge and The Dirty Dozen). It’s also one of the first of the 14 pairings of Jill Ireland and Charles Bronson. Bronson first met Ireland in 1962, when she was married to Bronson’s The Great Escape co-star David McCallum. Upon meeting her, Bronson told McCallum, “I’m going to marry your wife.” The two married in 1968 and maintained a large and inseparable family until her death from breast cancer in 1990.
‑In 1963‑64, Bronson played Linc on the TV series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, alongside 12‑year‑old Kurt Russell. In 1981, Bronson was passed over for the role of Snake Plissken in favor of not-12-year-old Kurt Russell. The reason? Bronson looked too tough for the role. Given that Bronson was an aerial gunner on a B-29 Superfortress and earned a Purple Heart in WWII and that Bronson worked in a coal mine from age 10 (becoming claustrophobic in the process; see Six Degrees entry 1) until 22 (when he escaped the coal mines by going to war), that’s probably a fair charge to level against the man.
REVIEW
While on a job to assassinate a target, professional hitman Jeff Heston (Charles Bronson) is chased down by an armed group of thugs, shot, and left for dead in an epic double-cross. Unfortunately for the organized criminals, while they shot Heston, they didn’t kill him. His trip through the prison system only serves to steel his desire to get revenge on the people who set him up.
Among these men is Al Meyer (Telly Savalas), a gangster who wants Heston’s gun and unique skill-set for his criminal empire, and Meyer isn’t one to take no for an answer. So he’s organized a nice little set-up to try and blackmail Heston into working for him, and he’s got the ultimate weapon on his side: Heston’s old flame Veronica Shelton (Jill Ireland).
The game is on. Jeff wants revenge, but he’s got to avoid Meyer’s band of killers, traitors, and scumbags in the process. Will Jeff gain the upper hand and emerge victorious, will he cave in and give Meyer the gun for hire that he wants, or will he die in New Orleans’ blood-soaked streets?
The only person than Charles Bronson off-screen is Charles Bronson onscreen. My love of Bronson isn’t exactly a secret (see Charles Bronson Killing Hipsters for more evidence of that fact). While others see a leather Muppet with a mop of crazy hair and a mustache, I see a brilliant, underrated actor doing the best with what he’s been given. His love for wife Jill Ireland occasionally brings his movies down a few notches due to her, ahem, lack of acting skills, but she’s not terrible in this film (her Italian dub voice, however…). As for Telly Savalas, he’s awesome in pretty much everything he’s involved in, and this is no exception.
Of the three Sergios who shot spaghetti westerns in the 60’s, Sergio Sollima is the least well-known (after Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci). He only did a few spaghetti westerns before moving to the genre for which he is most known, the poliziotteschi flick—a unique and fun blend of tough cops, graphic violence, corruption, and action. Of these films,Violent City is one of the first of the genre and still one of the better ones thanks to Sollima’s skill as a director. The movie moves pretty leisurely by modern standards, but it makes great use of some beautiful locations and interesting clothes to craft a great looking movie.
It’s weird watching a 70’s action movie through a modern lens. Rather than the hyperactive editing we’re used to,Violent City gives you long takes, even during the action sequence. Among the stand‑out features of the film, the car chase is supreme, and it’s one of the best car chases of the 70’s thanks to the tiny, winding roads of St. Thomason which the scene is shot (and Bronson’s hot Mustang). One of the stand-out filming methods of Sollima is the awesome camera-on-car shot that allows the viewer to feel the car twist and turn while being chased. It’s pretty epic, and the claustrophobic feel of the buildings on either side only adds to the tension.
Of course, the combination of English and Italian dialogue, the movie’s interesting pace, and the very muddled script make the film hard to follow. That tends to happen when you A) translate a movie into English and B) have story input from six different people. You can follow along, but you have to pay attention and you have to do your best to remember who everyone is. The plot is pretty simple, but the movie is constructed in kind of a weird way, and there’s not a lot of helpful hand-holding from the dialogue. Well, the English dialogue, anyway.
While the movie doesn’t make much sense at some points, it doesn’t really matter. Much like Jill Ireland herself, if a movie looks good enough, you can safely ignore the fact that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and just enjoy it for its visual pleasure.
RATING – 3 sniper bullets out of 5
TRAILER
OWN IT: Get ”Violent City” on DVD from Amazon.com!
I love that iconic gunshot sound effect in the trailer. I’d be curious of its origin, Wilhelm Scream style.
I would be too, actually; I hear it all the time in those 70′s flicks and I just wonder who I could ask about that. Probably Ben Burtt, since he’s the guy who brought the Wilhelm Scream into prominence.