La cité de la violence

There's absolutely no way that any movie can start off better than "Violent City". Charlie Bronson on a yacht with a ravishing blond chick, then moving onto land where the couple immediately gets subjected to a wild car chase through extremely narrow streets (and over stairs!) and ending with a violent shootout! And all this time not a single word is being spoken by anyone and all we here are the sounds of squeaking tires, snorting car engines and Ennio Moricone's umpteenth fabulous soundtrack. The first ten minutes of "Violent City" are so damn brilliant I was even tempted to stop watching the film because I honestly feared things could only go downwards from that point, ha! Luckily it didn't. Sure the pacing slowed down a bit (only a little bit, mind you) but a great film unfolds itself, with a simplistic but nevertheless compelling plot, gritty atmosphere and terrific acting performances by Charles Bronson (as the silent as always but deadly killer), Telly Savalas (as the sneering, sleazy and eccentric super-villain) and Jill Ireland (as the bimbo who appears to screw around with half of the city). Jeff is a retiring hit man who completes one more personal killing job when a former friend double-crosses him, leaves him for dead and runs off with his lady friend. Jeff's spectacular payback, executed at a race car circuit) gets him noticed by the big boss of the city's organized crime network. He wants Jeff to be a part of his successful crime-family, and when he refuses an exhilarating and testosterone-packed cat and mouse game ensues. The plot isn't highly original, but several independent sequences are magnificent, like the aforementioned opening, the intense finale or – most of all – the scene where Vanessa gets introduced to Weber (Savalas) in a restaurant. Sergio Sollima is a gifted director, who primarily earned his fame in the spaghetti western genre ("The Big Gundown" and "Run Man Run"). That's also exactly what "Violent City" often resembles; a gritty urban western with Bronson in his familiar role of lone outlaw passing through a town where no one can be trusted. If I understood correctly, the titular violent city is supposed to be Michigan, where strangely everyone speaks a combination of English and Italian. Funny detail on the Dutch DVD-release is that the dubbing is incomplete. Some of the dialogs start in English but halfway the conversation swifts to Italian and back to English again. Not at all bothering, especially not in case you looked forward to this movie as much as I did.

Uh-oh! We've got a hit-man here who has fallen in love and wants to go straight – we all know that there's only one way to leave the mob, right? Bronson is the hit-man and Jill Ireland is the chick who's turned his head, and after one of my favourite credit sequences ever where we see Bronson under observation to a kick-ass Morricone soundtrack, a bunch of guys turn up to waste our stone-face killer. One car chase and a double-cross later, Bronson's having bullets pulled out of him and sent to jail for a while.

It gives him plenty of time to stew over what's happened. Seems the last guy who hired to him to kill someone has double-crossed him and somehow his missus seems to be involved. Being a 'let bygones be bygones' kind of guy, Bronson's first task upon being released from jail is to try and track down these two and kill them both.

Luckily for us his past-employer is also a race car driver! That gives us a lengthy sequence at a race track where Bronson scopes out a good place to take out this guy with a sniper rifle, a sequence which is dialogue free and lasts about ten minutes. Also, it takes place under a huge advertisement for Pan-Am airlines, so I guess they were fitting the bill for the film, or Sergio Sollima was just a big fan of that airline.

Once this guy has been incinerated, Bronson starts receiving pictures of him setting up the kill at the race track, and realizes that starting a new life won't be so easy after all…

Those expecting an action-packed film with Bronson taking down waves of bad guys would probably be better switching the film off around the ten minute mark because the film is more about Bronson brooding about his relationship with Jill Ireland and arguing with Telly Savalas (a mob boss who is blackmailing Bronson and wants to hire Bronson full time). Savalas is good here as a seemingly legit-businessman who may be telling more home truths than Bronson wishes to hear.

Set possibly in New Orleans and Detroit Michigan at the same time (I was a bit confused by that), the film looks great, sounds great and for the first half is great, but be warned that pace slows way down before you get to the grim ending. Also, the version I watched had eight minutes of extra footage added in Italian with English subtitles that seems to add a bit more depth to the proceedings.

For the mopiest hit-man that wants to leave the mob, look out for Tony Arzenta!

First of all i must admit that i'm a Charles Bronson fan and have been for quite a while. I have seen a lot of his films including all of them made after Violent City. So when i came across the movie being released on DVD and i was still yet to see it, i was quick to buy it. The DVD is presented in a fantastic format (trailer, production and movie stills, 15 minute interview with the director and cast and crew backgrounds). The movie is structured in a very unique way. Being an Italian/French coproduction and filmed largely in New Orleans the film consists of English and Italian dialogue to satisfy both cultures and uses flashback scenes to illustrate what is a very straightforward story of hitmen and mobsters and doublecrossings. The music score is by Ennio Morricone and as expected first rate. The cast is headed by Bronson. He doesn't talk much in this movie, more so than in his other outings and uses more of a physical style of acting with many close ups on his charactaristic face. He does well as usual. Telly Savalas has a small, but important role as the head of his "family". His philosiphies to Bronson are interesting. And Jill Ireland as Vanessa is truly seductive. She has never looked more beautiful than in this movie and you get to see plenty of her in this version. Her acting is not great but not too bad compared to some of her later stuff with her husband. As a whole i wasn't expecting too much but "Violent City" is quite under-rated and does have some very good scenes including a car chase, a sniper scene and the very well done ending. There are no good guys in this movie, but it is truthful. I give it a 7 out of 10, but i don't know if non-Bronson fans would enjoy it as much. I hope they continue to put more of Charlie's films on DVD and done in a similar way. Particularly "Rider On The Rain", "The Mechanic", "The Valachi Papers" and the little known Bronson/Curtis "You Can't Win 'Em All.

I'm a big fan of Sergio Sollima's ingenious Spaghetti Westerns, and Charles Bronson is without doubt a great enrichment to any movie he played in. Sollima's "Citta Violenta" aka. "Violent City" aka. "The Family" of 1970 is a very good crime/action flick with Bronson in the leading role and a great score by Ennio Morricone. "The Family" may not quite share the brilliance of Sollima's Westerns, but it is definitely a very solid, greatly acted film that no Bronson fan can afford to miss!

After hit man Jeff Heston (Charles Bronson) is double crossed by his girlfriend (Bronson's real life wife Jill Ireland), and almost gets killed by rival gangsters, he spends the following four years in prison. After getting out of jail, he wants to track down those who betrayed him. It is not so easy, however, to find out who was involved in his assassination attempt, and Heston has to make quite an effort to distinguish between friends and enemies.

Charles Bronson is once again great as the leading character, and definitely the best choice to play Jeff Heston. Telly Savalas also delivers a great performance as the boss of a crime family. Although many folks seem to think differently, I also found that Jill Ireland did a great job as femme fatale Vanessa. One of the few things that were not quite necessary in "Citta Violenta", were the endless car chases. Car chases are of course mandatory for a film like this, but when they get too long, they can get a bit boring easily. The car chase sequences here are usually followed by violent action, however. The movie is quite imaginatively photographed, and Ennio Morricone's score is, as always, great, and although it is a bit different to the 'typical' Morricone that we're used to from Westerns, it is immediately clear who composed this soundtrack.

A very well made action flick with a great leading performance by Bronson, "Citta Violenta" is a great flick, maybe not quite as essential as Sollima's Westerns, but immensely entertaining, atmospheric and totally badass, and not to be missed by a Bronson fan. 8/10

Charles Bronson is at his coolest and most bad ass in this entertaining Italian crime flick. Bronson plays Jeff Heston, a professional hit man who wants to leave that line of work behind him. But his associates will have NONE of that, and spend a lot of time trying to set him up and take him out. When attempts are made on his life, Jeff makes it his mission to get revenge on the old "friend" and current flame who tried to eliminate him.

Adding a shot in the arm is Telly Savalas, appearing around the one hour mark, as a slick, rich gangster, Al Weber. Telly is a lot of fun to watch. Female lead Jill Ireland is less satisfactory (but looks amazing), but she's not bad as this scheming, conniving person. The excellent international cast also includes Michel Constantin as Killain, Umberto Orsini as Steve, and Ray Saunders as one of Jeffs' cell mates.

This twist laden script, with six people in total credited for the story and screenplay (including Lina Wertmuller and director Sergio Sollima), has the potential to confuse the viewer, especially as it doesn't always exist in one time frame. But Sollima does an excellent job at crafting the action. One can hardly fail to notice that the opening set piece plays out wordlessly, with no actors speaking until about 12 minutes along. A climactic elevator ride similarly plays out almost without sound. The camera work is first rate, as is the use of various locations. The pacing may cause some viewers to fidget, as it's very deliberate most of the time.

Bronson fans will see a different side of him here, as he roughs up his real life wife Ireland on more than one occasion. He's not a squeaky clean protagonist, for sure. The ending may likewise take some people by surprise.

Overall this is stylish trash, well shot in Techniscope and featuring a typically eclectic soundtrack courtesy of the legendary Ennio Morricone. There are also little doses of nudity along the way.

Seven out of 10.