classicsoncall Review of Rulers of the City

Rulers of the City (1976)

"He don't care about the dough anymore, he wants revenge".

[4/10 · 2 January 2009]

I read a couple of good reviews on this board for "Mr. Scarface", but for anyone uninitiated in the genre of Italian gangster films like myself, the picture will probably make very little sense. Indeed, after the initial setup involving the ten million lira scam, the picture devolved into a fairly routine revenge flick with a minor twist in the identity of Rick's (Al Cliver) character. The whole gang war plot got muddied up for me with the inclusion of Vinchenzo Napoli (Vittorio Caprioli), but as most other viewers commented, he's about the only one who gave this picture any life with his often ineffective attempts at violence. I found it somewhat unbelievable that Manzari's goons who chased Tony through the streets didn't actually stroke out before Tony even laid a hand on them. For all of his buildup as the title character, Jack Palance was wasted rather unceremoniously in an anticlimactic near finale, making the U.S. working title, "Mr. Scarface", rather moot. I've seen enough spaghetti Westerns to know that they don't all work; I guess in this case, my first look at a spaghetti gangster flick didn't quite make it either.