Tag Archives: Milano Calibre 9 (1972)

50 years of Milano Calibre 9 and the crime cinema of Italy’s ‘years of lead’

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Fifty years ago, Milano Calibro 9, or Calibre 9 as it was released in the United States, hit Italian cinema screens. A small time mafia foot soldier, Ugo Piazzo (Gastone Moschin, a famous Italian comic actor at the time), leaves prison only to be caught up in a conspiracy around the disappearance three years earlier of $300,000 from a Milanese crime boss known as the Americano. Believing that Ugo took the money and stashed it while he was in jail, the Americano sends Rocco (German Italian actor Mario Adorf), a clownish but lethal mob enforcer, to retrieve it. Ugo denies he had anything to do with the missing cash, but no one, including the police and his ambitious stripper girlfriend (Barbara Bouchet), will believe him. 

Calibre 9 is an excellent entry point to examine the Italian crime film phenomena known as the poliziotteschi, well over a hundred of which appeared from the late 1960s to 1980. It also serves to focus some overdue attention one of the lesser-known but more interesting of the many poliziotteschi directors, Fernando Di Leo.

You can read my piece on the crime cinema of Italy’s ‘years of lead’ in full here at the CrimeReads site.… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Crime film, Fernando Di Leo, Neo Noir, Poliziotteschi

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The heist always goes wrong, part 2: reader picks and other favourite heist movies

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 11 Comments

ST 2My recent post The heist always goes wrong – ten of the best heist movies ever made, generated some great reader feedback. The best thing about the response was that it pointed me in the direction of a number heist films I hadn’t seen or that I need to revisit.

Based on your comments and the thoughts I’ve had on the subject since the original post, here are follow up list of other films that could be included in a best of heist films list (and my shameless editorialising regarding what I think about the merits of not of them).

Straight Time (1978)

A huge thanks to West Australian crime writer David Whish Wilson for alerting me to Straight Time, which I’d seen previously but forgotten. Dustin Hoffman plays a career criminal just out of prison, trying to stay on the right side of his ball breaking parole officer, masterfully played by one of my screen heroes, M. Emmet Walsh, and avoid the temptation of re-offending.

Straight Time is based on the book No Best So Fierce, by real life con Edward Bunker (who has a small role in the film). Everything about this film works, the script, the down at heel late seventies feel, the cast, which includes Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Kathy Bates and Harry Dean Stanton.… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Fernando Di Leo, Film Noir, French cinema, Heist films, James Woods, Jim Thompson, M Emmet Walsh, Robert Ryan, Sterling Hayden, Steve McQueen, Yaphet Kotto

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