La revanche du Sicilien

Original title: Johnny Cool

1963
16
1h 43m

IMDb RATING

6.4/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

Elizabeth Montgomery and Henry Silva in La revanche du Sicilien (1963)

Play trailer2:25

1 Video

99+ Photos

Action Crime Drama Thriller

Exiled American gangster Colini sends his protégé-killer Giordano to the USA to eliminate Colini's mob enemies.Exiled American gangster Colini sends his protégé-killer Giordano to the USA to eliminate Colini's mob enemies.Exiled American gangster Colini sends his protégé-killer Giordano to the USA to eliminate Colini's mob enemies.

Director
- William Asher
Writers
- Joseph Landon
- John McPartland
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.4/10

1.2K

YOUR RATING

Director
- William Asher
Writers
- Joseph Landon
- John McPartland
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Videos1

Trailer 2:25

Johnny Cool

Photos117

+ 111

User reviews32

6.41.2K

Featured reviews

9MarieGabrielle

Johnny Cool....

Pure 1963 gangster drama. Not sure if this is on DVD yet, but it should be.

Elizabeth Montgomery as a brunette, looks amazing. She is a bored socialite who wants excitement, and hooks up with Henry Silva.

Some of the scenes are classic. The Beverly Hills Hotel, Las Vegas, a NYC skyscraper. Telly Savalas also has a cameo, and Sammy Davis Jr. Also, John McGiver ("The Manchurian Candidate") as an angry casino boss.

There is also something aesthetic and wild about seeing the streets of Los Angeles and NY in black and white, in the 60's. It just seems so surreal. Don't miss this film, they often show it on TCM channel. 9/10

dougdoepke

Muddled

Johnny Muddled might be a more apt title. Too bad the script and direction fail to intensify the premise's rich potential. In fact, there's a ton of potential suspense in the idea of a hit-man taking out some big time gangsters, one-by-one. Unfortunately the narrative muddles the idea without crucially developing Johnny Cool's planning or lead up to the killings. Instead, events merely happen haphazardly, and at an audience distance. At the same time, director Asher fails to draw us in, passively filming the happenings instead. In my little book, the movie's best part are the legion of location shots of NYC, LA, and Las Vegas that lend an involving eye. In that limited sense, the movie's well produced. Also, actress Montgomery lends some much needed spark to the performances even as her role flounders in illogic. And though he has an exotic look about him, actor Silva more or less walks through his role. Maybe someone thought disengagement would be the essence of cool, but instead it adds to the emotional distance. All in all, I'm with the reviewer who thinks the script had to cobble additional players from Lawford's (producer) Las Vegas crowd into the clumsy end result. But whatever the reason, it's no wonder the flick has faded into rank obscurity; and that's despite the peripheral presence of so many familiar names and faces ( Backus, Lawrence, Cook, et al.) from yesteryear. I hope they at least picked up a good payday.

7dolly_the_ye-ye_bird

Henry Silva Shines

Nice little mob movie. And not a bad little showcase for a few Ratpack members either. Great actors...Elizabeth Montgomery, Henry Silva, Jim Backus, and Telly Savalas to name a few. Silva is in his element here, playing a gangster sent to avenge the deportation of a mob boss who can't get back in the country to settle the score himself. No one plays a better heavy than this guy! So cold and calculating! Silva's Johnny is one creepy character! Perfect! Montgomery is absolutely beautiful and shows the beginnings of a great career. No wonder she became a star!!The film itself I found to be a bit slow and, at times, ever so slightly confusing. Even so, I enjoyed it and would watch it again if only to marvel at the talent of Silva.

9noir guy

'Lost' classic crime movie

'Lost' classic crime movie, with 'Rat Pack' member Peter Lawford as Executive Producer, and featuring Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop in single scene cameos, this is an often brutal mob movie featuring glacial Henry Silva as a pitiless, downbeat anti-hero pitting his wits and weaponry against a variety of slick-suited, big-city mobsters operating behind an outwardly respectable veneer. Opening the movie as a Salvatore Giuliano-type Sicilian folk-hero (the early scenes show a young 'Johnny' being taken under Giuliano's wing in World War II after witnessing his mother's death at the hands of the Nazis), 'Johnny' is reinvented and resurrected by Marc Lawrence's exiled 'Lucky Luciano' type syndicate boss, who has arranged his faked death in order to set him loose against the former Stateside associates who are now lining their pockets with his ill-gotten gains. Swiftly acquiring Elizabeth Montgomery's thrill-seeking, well-heeled moll (a cinematic half-sister to the similarly enthralled Claire Trevor in Robert Wise's BORN TO KILL), Johnny sets about his one-man vendetta amidst the boardrooms, casinos and fancy spreads with a singleminded ruthlessness that, in its settings and attitude (if not it's visual style) appears to foreshadow Lee Marvin's similarly brutal rampage through the well-heeled trappings of contemporary corporate America four years later in POINT BLANK. Comparisons aside, this is a slick slice of thick-ear hardboiled crime, aided by a snappy Billy May score and Sammy Davis Jr. theme which adds to the sense of pace and rhythm engendered by William (BEACH PARTY) Asher's snappy direction. And the ending's a killer (pun intended). Undoubtedly worthy of wider (any!) availability, as it's an often cynical, but arresting crime movie (pun similarly intended)with the makings of a cult. Catch it if you can.

artzau

Gangsters

This is classic Henry Silva when he was young and a potentially hot hollywood item running with the 'Rat Pack' and a pre-Bewitched Elizabeth Montgomery. The cultural aspects of the Mafia are touched on before Mario Puzo's novel, which came a few years later. Some cameo support performances from Jim "Mr. Magoo" Backus and Sammy Davis, Jr. make an interesting and dark gangster story. The ending is blunt and may leave you feeling as if you were wandering in the wasteland only to find the key to the exit doesn't work. Check it out.

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
An article in the 21 October 1962 edition of the Los Angeles Times called Elizabeth Montgomery "the most bruised actress in pictures". During this production she had a car door slammed on her hand and suffered contusions jumping from a pier onto a boat, among other injuries. Plus, she had to endure the filming of a brutal rape scene which ended up on the cutting room floor.

Goofs
In the second half of the film, after Darien abandons her car in front of the beauty parlor, the police show up. The police later describe it as being a "1961 Ford". It is in fact a 1962 Ford (Galaxie 500 Sunliner).

Quotes
Johnny Colini: While you are here, you'll go through a process of polishing designed to make you "civilised". A little, not too much. On the surface, not inside. When I decide you're ready, you'll do a job for me, a job no other man could do. I want you to go to those who betrayed me, take back what they stole and make them dead. Do that and what is mine, is yours. You will be my son.
Johnny Cool: I am no son of Colini. You disgraced us in America.
Johnny Colini: Hmm, there is a streak of decency in you. You've gotta get rid of that streak.
Johnny Cool: They teach you to murder in Chicago and then they send you back to us.
Johnny Colini: And you, who taught you to murder?
Johnny Cool: I am no criminal. I never murder for money. All I have done, I have done for my people.
Johnny Colini: Yes, I'm a criminal. I know it. I am not kind, I know that. I'm not even a generous man. I go to church and lie to God. What's mine is mine because I'm selfish, mean and cruel. There is no one I could point to and say, "this is the reason why Colini is a murderer" but you, you have the people. Poor people. Mr Giordano, you're a liar, yourself. The people, the poor people, aren't you weary of taking bows? You ate well, you've stolen everything you wanted and when you're belly was full, you gave the rest away. I know you, my young friend.
Johnny Cool: I am no friend of yours.
Johnny Colini: You will be, you have no other choice. I put you in the streets, you'll be dead within the hour. Or you'll do the job I picked for you and you'll become rich. More money and wealth than a peasant could dream.
Johnny Cool: Ten million lire.
Johnny Colini: You will not understand a number that big. But you'll learn. Take you a long time. But I will teach you. I'll teach you America: the clothes; how to walk; how to act; who has the money, where it comes from; which are the important names and where their power lies. And when I've finished, you'll be one of three men in the world who knows it all. This I teach you. But in the end, what will count is what is here
[he pokes him in the chest]
Johnny Colini: .
Johnny Colini: In your hills you have been a glorious success, we'll now see what you do with a mountain, America. You prove you can be the son of Colini and in a few years when I have gone, you will inherit my kingdom.