GrimPrecise
I'll tell you why so serious
Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
bensonmum2
Incredible! I haven't watched many 70s Euro-Crime films in a while, but I can't remember any being quite this good. Caliber 9 is just amazing. Almost everything about the movie is perfect. The plot is simple enough - recently released from prison, Ugo Piazza is approached by his old employers, led by the Americano, about $300,000 in cash he may have stolen and hidden. Without any other prospect, he agrees to go to work for the gang with hopes of throwing off the old suspicions. I'm seriously not going to go into any more detail - I'd hate to ruin any of the plot twists and turns for anyone who might be reading this.Director Fernando Di Leo expertly oversees one of the more interesting films I've seen recently. The movie moves at a fantastic pace with action, interesting dialogue, and intrigue around every corner. The violence is plentiful, but not overdone (a complaint I've had in the past about some Euro-Crime films). The acting is far superior to what you'd expect in a movie of this type. Mario Adorf, Philippe Leroy, Lionel Stander, and Barbara Bouchet give some of the best performances I've ever seen from them. But, the real standout is Gastone Moschin. His steely-eyed Ugo Piazza is one of the best characters ever. The understated way Moschin plays Piazza is brilliant. Finally, I've already referred to the plot, but it is so well written, it deserves another mention. There's not a wasted scene. The final couple twists brought a real smile to my face. They're so unexpected that I was totally caught off-guard. Bravo!Overall, Caliber 9 is a real winner. It's the kind of movie I love discovering and the reason I sit through some total garbage just hoping I'll stumble on something like this. I wish I was a real writer and could better express my feelings toward Caliber 9. I'm not, so I'll end this the way I started - incredible!
tomgillespie2002
Fernando Di Leo was a well-respected director who near-perfected the poliziotteschi genre during the 1970's, taking a genre spear-headed by the likes of Italian film-makers Umberto Lenzi and Carlo Lizzani and delivering tough-as-nails stories about brutish men in a brutish world. Milano Calibro 9, or simply Caliber 9, is one of Di Leo's most highly-regarded works, kicking off his Milieu trilogy (followed by Manhunt and concluded by The Boss) for which he is now best remembered for. And the film is terrific - inspiring future directors such as John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, Milano Calibro 9 begins with an explosion of violence that serves as a warning of what is to come.After a heist that saw a wad of money go missing and the criminals behind it either dead or behind bars, shadowy mafia boss The Americano (Lionel Stander) is left fuming, turning his city upside down in search for his cash. Career criminal Ugo (Gastone Moschin), one of the participants in the robbery, is released from prison and is immediately reprimanded by his psychotic former boss Rocco (Mario Adorf), who fingers Ugo as the culprit. Denying any involvement and trying to go straight, Ugo finds himself pulled back into the criminal world he thought he had left behind by the mafia and the police, the latter trying to pressure him into turning informer. Hooking up with his friend Chino (Philippe Leroy) and girlfriend Nelly (the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet), Ugo plans to turn the tables on his former gang while he still has a fraction of leverage.The film is not without it's problems - occasionally the narrative sags when the action is away from the city's violent underworld, and the sporadic political discussions between the veteran Commissioner (Frank Wolff) and his left-wing underling seem relevant but out of place - but Milano Caliber 9's quality lies within its tone and exhilarating brutality. The opening sees the manic Rocco beat up suspects, tie them together in a cave and blow them up with dynamite. Although the film doesn't maintain the excitement of this early scene, it truly comes alive when the characters - an ensemble of odd-looking barbarians - threaten each other with words, fists, knives or guns. Moschin proves to be a stoic anti-hero, but Adorf steals the show as the arrogant loud-mouth Rocco, resembling Super Mario in a tailored suit and a neater moustache. The twists and turns keep coming right until the end, and left me wanting to see more from a film-maker who has, up to now, completely evaded me.
Ben Larson
Like The Italian Connection, this Fernando Di Leo film features Mario Adorf. It also features Barbara Bouchet (Gangs of New York), who left the States in the 70s to do Italian films. She jumped from Police films, to giallo, to erotica. Always a pleasure to watch.This is a typical double cross film with a missing $300,000. Who took the money? Who will end up with the money? Who will double cross whom? The police just sit back and let the mafia, led by the Americano (Lionel Stander) tear each other apart.Lots of fights, a big shootout, and some fine performances by Adorf, and Gastone Moschin
Eumenides_0
Some movies you just need to watch a few minutes to know you'll love them. Fernando Di Leo's Caliber 9 opens with a gangster overseeing a criminal operation in a pigeon-occupied plaza. A package containing $300,000 moves across the city, passing from runner to runner, until ending up in the hands of the sadistic Rocco (Mario Adorf), an enforcer for a crime lord. But along the way someone has replaced the bank notes with blank pages. Rocco's revenge is swift and brutal, rounding up the runners one by one and disposing of them in one explosive go. It's a stylish, fast-paced montage, playing to an amazing main theme composed by the legendary Luis Bacalov. Five minutes is all we need to know that Caliber 9 is a violent, mesmerizing, exciting movie.Who stole the money? That's the movie's mystery in this mixture of Italian Poliziottesco and American film noir. The Poliziottesco is a crime/action subgenre of Italian cinema that flourished during the '70s, characterized by its unglamorous and graphic depiction of crime and violence. This came out the same year as The Godfather, and it's interesting to compare how each country portrays organized crime. Coppola's loyal, honourable family has no place in Di Leo's Italy. Rocco has no problems torturing a woman by smashing her face against furniture repeatedly. It's violence divested of entertainment values; the criminals aren't nice and we're not supposed to like them.Rocco and the police think Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin), a runner involved in the scheme and who was arrested shortly after for a botched robbery, stole the package. Both Rocco and the Police Commissioner (Frank Wolff) are waiting for Ugo to go get the money. The police see this as an opportunity to arrest Rocco's boss, the crime lord known as The Americano (Lionel Stander).The only problem is that Uzo vehemently denies having taken the money, and he intends to prove it so he can settle down again with his former girlfriend, Nelly (Barbara Bouchet). Ugo could have walked out of an American film noir: a man of few words and fewer friends, caught between brutal thugs and cops who wants to use him as bait, running against time to prove his innocence, he has the typical aura of doom that looms over the lives of film noir protagonists.His only connections in the crime world are the blind Don Vincenzzo (Ivo Garrani), a former Mafia Don, and his bodyguard, Chino (Philippe Leroy), but they refuse to get involved out of principle. If Ugo really stole the money, then he broke rules of conduct amongst criminals. The movie is very ingenious in the way it contrasts a mythical, bygone age of honourable Mafiosi, nostalgically recalled by Don Vincenzzo, and the unchecked vicious thugs controlled by Rocco. The concept of honour comes back to haunt Chino at the end, in one of the movie's many twists.But Ugo is a resourceful guy, capable of withstanding a beating if that will further his goals. Although not the physical type he's smart and we watch him manipulate Rocco, The Americano, the police and Chino like pieces in a chessboard, except he's moving the pieces on each side. Anyone who has seen A Fistful of Dollars or Miller's Crossing may think they know where this is going, but the way Ugo turns everyone against each other is a class act on its own level.The acting is efficient but not stellar. Moschin's subdued performance is the perfect counterpoint to the over-the-top tour de force by Adorf, who bursts into the screen like a wild beast ready to tear his preys apart. Although his performance as a tough, nasty thug lends itself easily to parody, it's also one of the funniest aspects of the movie The movie also suffers from something endemic in Italian cinema from the '70s. At the time almost everyone in the arts was a leftist and usually the films were full of political content. Some directors knew how to incorporate this naturally into the story – Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion does a great job showing the way a fascist cop's mind works, and Bertolucci's The Conformist is a sober portrait of life in Mussolini's regime. Others failed to marry story and content and turned into pamphlets. Such is the case of Caliber 9 at times: actors Frank Wolff and Luigi Pistilli play politically opposed cops and slow down the narrative with conversations about the social causes of crime, the treatment of inmates, political corruption, etc. These scenes seem to belong in another film, and Di Leo only justified not removing them because Wolff and Pistilli deliver great performances.
