Milano Calibro 9: Italian badassery like you've never bloody well seen it.

Milano Calibro 9 (Or simply Caliber 9 in English) is the kind of movie they don't seem to make anymore. It's Film Noir filtered through another country's psyche, twenty years after the States stopped producing filmic nihilism. It goddamn drips testosterone off your TV screen and puts the likes of Tarantino or even Frank Miller to shame. They got nothing on Fernando Di Leo.


Caliber 9 opens with a trade-off that goes terribly wrong, resulting in thirty-thousand dollars going missing. Three years later, a fellow named Ugo Piazza emerges from prison on good conduct, only to be picked up by ex-partner in crime Rocco (A perfectly over the top Mario Adorf). Turns out Ugo was in on the trade and Rocco and his employer (A shadowy man known only as "The Americano") believe he stashed the money before getting arrested.
Ugo is harangued until he rejoins the Americano's ranks in order to prove his supposed innocence, and all kinds of hell breaks loose.

                        You don't wanna annoy these guys. They've got dynamite.

This movie is straight-up epic. It features some of the most intense and over the top sequences I have ever seen in bloody anything. The opening perfectly sets the psychotic tone of the movie and it just keeps getting better from there on. It's also jam-packed with great characters, from the ferociously loyal yet petulant Rocco to this pair of cops who spend most of their time arguing right-wing vs left-wing. Our hero Ugo (Played by stone-faced Gastone Moschin) himself is a supremely badass guy. Half the time I found it hard to believe any of the people threatening him had the gall to do so.
(On a side note, I don't think I've ever seen anyone smoke a cigarette quite as uniquely as Ugo Piazza).
The film's soundtrack is something else as well. Done by progressive rock band Osanna, it gives the film a total 70's flavor and further adds to the absurd amounts of epic. The camera-work as well is just to die for. The way the actors are framed in the shots or how some of the action was shot feels as though the camera was on the verge of shattering due to the intensity on screen.
And boy does the script have layers! Not only is the dialogue hard-edged and snappy, but there's a lot one can glean from the interactions between characters. Honestly, I think I'd probably have to watch the film again to fully grasp some of the reactions these men have. This coupled with the flow of the story and the events that occur, of betrayal and brotherhood, give the whole film a Shakespearian feel.

                               Now, do you really think you'd tell this guy off?

 Now the film does definitely feel influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville, but it never feels derivative of his works. If anything, it honors the man's crime films by having a distinct feel to it, rather than simply aping the man's films. There are also some admittedly B-movie-esque moments (A guitar solo playing over a sex-scene comes to mind) but they don't feel out of place. The film essentially sets itself up as being insane in the first 10 minutes, so anything after is fair game.
If anything works against it, it's possibly the aforementioned political cops. One's a snide bastard who wishes for all criminals to die and hounds Piazza non-stop. The other views the current system of punishment as inherently flawed and essentially has a communist world-view. The film, on occasion, cuts to them in their offices and the audience is treated to political debate. This happens infrequently enough that it doesn't slow the movie down, but it doesn't quite fit into the context of the rest of the film.
The film's also got a spaghetti western feel to it, but considering Di Leo had written many entries into the genre prior to directing Calibro, that's hardly surprising.

Overall, if you like your crime films (Or films in general) extra epic, with heaping servings of machismo and man-love, then you've gotta see this movie. It's tops.

5/5

Now I just have to track down the soundtrack...