Die Mafia-Story

ISLAND OF CRIME is an early Italian crime flick shot on sunny Sardinia, where British tourist Charlotte Rampling is travelling with her boyfriend before his sudden kidnapping. Franco Nero is the kindly stranger who helps her in her quest to rescue him, and it all gets very murky and conspiratorial along the way. This well-shot movie makes good use of the physical presence of the actors, but I found it limited in comparison to gialli of the era, and the real-life animal cruelty is a bit unforgiveable.

This dullish thriller utilizes the same kidnapping theme that would dominate many Italian movies (and Italian life) through at least the 70s, although later treatments tended to be more in the realm of sensational action-packed crime thrillers. This movie doesn't seem certain how seriously to take itself-there's not much action, and the Sardinian atmosphere is vivid (at least photographically), but there's not enough insight into the politics or economics that would justify a relatively non-exploitative approach.

Franco Nero plays the son of a tightfisted local landowner; his friend, son of another wealthy local landowner, is the one who is kidnapped at the beginning of the film. It's Charlotte Rampling's POV we get during that key initial scene. Yet her vacationing-Brit-girl casual girlfriend of the kidnapped man turns out to be largely superfluous to the plot, making it seem as though her inclusion was really not much more than a commercial appeal to English-speaking audiences. (Rampling being Rampling, her character also comes off as extremely glamorous but a snippy brat, so we're not all that sorry she stays on the margins.)

There are echoes here of Bertolucci's much later "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man," particularly in some later plot revelations. But in their different ways neither film works very well. Despite its regional focus, this one feels too much like a production compromised and rendered a little characterless by the requirements of "international" casting. There's a climax of violence and desperation, but the film just hasn't worked up enough suspense for it to have that much impact. It's all a near-miss, no cheesy knock-off but not strong enough to be memorable.

Franco Nero gets dark and broody in this moody, grim kidnapping film to the point that even his HAIR is darker than usual. Sadly, an unforgivable act of animal cruelty right at the start of this one sours the whole deal, but we'll get to that later.

Set in Sardinia, we find a skeletal Charlotte Rampling getting dumped in the middle of nowhere while her student boyfriend is kidnapped by a bunch of mysterious paesani. The kidnappers outrageously demand 80 million lire for the return of the son, and his landowner father has to sell off his land in order to raise the ransom. It's lucky that rich businessman Frank Wolff offers to buy it, eh?

The kidnapped fella's best mate, jumper wearing Franco Nero, smells a rat* and starts devising a plan of his own. He also hooks up with Charlotte Rampling for a bit of moody swearing, slapping around, and horizontal bopping while Charlotte looks totally bewildered by all the strange things happening around her and almost derails everything by getting the police involved...

One thing you'll notice about this film is that there's a ton of hand-held camera work in it that gives it a kind of woozy, Bourne Identity type edge. On the other hand, there's very little action so all that hand held stuff doesn't really go anywhere. This is a film about people staring at each other, from Nero staring at Rampling, or his own father, or the father of the kidnapped guy, to the father of the kidnapped guy staring at his wife, and so on and so forth.

What I'm trying to say is that this is another character driven late sixties Eurocrime film that will probably try your patience. Or maybe it was the fact that a few minutes into the film someone drove a car straight into a herd of sheep, for real. There was no need for that whatsoever, is there?

*rats actually smell quite pleasant. This film is not to be confused with the 1975 Greek film Island of Death, which far transcends the boundaries of good taste. We'll get to that in due course.

A real oddity, this one! A would-be cross between a violent crime thriller (shootouts and kidnappings on the island of Sardinia) and a National Geographic documentary (rugged scenery and peasant customs). To make it even more confusing, 60s style icon Charlotte Rampling looks as if she'd just wandered in from an episode of Absolutely Fabulous. Mind you, she does look gorgeous. Alas, when I saw it, her love scene with Latino hunk Franco Nero was ignominiously snipped by censors at the Romanian Cinematheque. (Where else would you see this movie?) Its director, Gianfranco Mingozzi, ascended to Eurotrash heaven with his 1974 'nympho nun' opus Flavia The Heretic.

The only other Mingozzi movie I had watched was the notorious if atypical Nunsploitationer FLAVIA, THE HERETIC (1974); this is a similarly serious effort to treat the kidnapping racket that was apparently rife in Sardinia at the time – in this respect, it is only borderline "Euro-Cult", still, the opportunity to be controversial was not shunned (as can be seen from the very first scene in which a car gratuitously smashes into a herd of sheep, mowing down one and crippling another!). The film starts with the abduction of the son of an eminent member of society while he is taking a country-side trip in his car (accompanied by a foreign student, played by Charlotte Rampling); the odd way it all happens, with almost a business-like symbiosis between criminals (hidden away in the mountains) and victim, perplexes the girl (who is left behind). Of course, she tries to dig into the matter but finds nothing but opposition – from authorities, locals and even the man's own family and best friend Franco Nero! Eventually, it transpires that the whole was an elaborate land-grabbing scheme – with the strings being pulled by one of their own (i.e. the landowners); even so, when he gets too big for his boots – since the man starts eying not just land ripe for grazing (which he used to sell for peanuts to the bandits) but seaside property for the raising of hotels and such, his own collaborators turn on him!; the latter had actually been alerted to this fact by Nero, who arranges for himself to be kidnapped in order to rout the guilty party – though, when embarking on this mission, he was unaware that his pal had innocently fallen in a skirmish between kidnappers and Police. The finale, then, sees the villain literally being 'taken for a ride' by Nero and the dead boy's family…with Rampling once again stranded unable to comprehend a way of life still so primitive and obviously different to her own (which is the true raison d'etre of the film – apart from the human/political drama being depicted, with its expected cinematic interpolations of suspense, action and even a little romance).