What went wrong here? Fernando Di Leo drops the ball in a meandering crime film that takes almost fifty minutes to get anywhere and doesn't feature any particularly interesting characters. All Jack Palance does is scowl with a cigarette in his mouth, something you've seen him do in a dozen other films.
It starts out with a kid witnessing his father being killed by Jack Palance, then we fast forward to the present (seventies Rome), where Tony works for local mob guy Luigi (played by a very pale Edmund Purdom). Tony wants to work the big leagues and ends up teaming up with Al Cliver, a guy who until recently worked for Palance. I guess the mystery is figuring out which one of them was the kid at the start of the film.
The first two thirds of the film concentrate on these two scamming Palance while also fighting with Purdom's second in command, and the main problem is neither of the leads are that interesting. The only character with any depth is the old Neopolitan pickpocket who gets caught up in the all the madness. For some reason though his character has an over the top Italian accent whilst everyone else is dubbed American.
Most of the action takes place in the last half hour of the film, where finally everyone gets their guns out. This is where Al Cliver shines as he's not the best at being emotional, but at least he looks cool gunning people down. The whole film seems a bit tired and it's as if Di Leo didn't know where to take the story, and as there's about a million Eurocrime films from 1976, this one doesn't quite cut it.
It starts out with a kid witnessing his father being killed by Jack Palance, then we fast forward to the present (seventies Rome), where Tony works for local mob guy Luigi (played by a very pale Edmund Purdom). Tony wants to work the big leagues and ends up teaming up with Al Cliver, a guy who until recently worked for Palance. I guess the mystery is figuring out which one of them was the kid at the start of the film.
The first two thirds of the film concentrate on these two scamming Palance while also fighting with Purdom's second in command, and the main problem is neither of the leads are that interesting. The only character with any depth is the old Neopolitan pickpocket who gets caught up in the all the madness. For some reason though his character has an over the top Italian accent whilst everyone else is dubbed American.
Most of the action takes place in the last half hour of the film, where finally everyone gets their guns out. This is where Al Cliver shines as he's not the best at being emotional, but at least he looks cool gunning people down. The whole film seems a bit tired and it's as if Di Leo didn't know where to take the story, and as there's about a million Eurocrime films from 1976, this one doesn't quite cut it.