Tony Arzenta (1973): A Hitman’s Revenge (Review)

Radiance continues its reliable run of ’70s Italian cinema with the release this week of 1973’s Tony Arzenta (aka Big Guns, aka No Way Out) an action packed and dour crime thriller from director Duccio Tessari (A Pistol for Ringo, The Return of Ringo) and starring Alain Delon, who also serves as one of the film’s producer, and Hollywood veteran Richard Conte.

Radiance have effectively struck gold mining this period of Italian cinema, because it was the height of the filoni cycle – a populist heyday for cinemagoers who were treated to several cycles or formulas in film genres. The Peplum movie, films that depicted bodybuilding muscle-men don sword and sandals for classical or mythological narratives, was arguably the first successful wave for the Italian film industry in the 1950s, which was later superceded by the Spaghetti Western genre in the subsequent decade, whilst the Giallo arguably outlived even that genre, continuing in rude health well into the 1970s. By the 1970s however, the Poliziotteschi, or Eurocrime, films about policemen or the mob, were king. Tony Arzenta fits this category, but it is also, as we shall see, something of an intriguing outlier.

Delon stars as the eponymous Arzenta, a ruthlessly efficient hitman working for the mob who begins to the pull of his family, specifically his young son for whom he desires a better, innocent life. He knows that if he doesn’t make the break now, he will eventually find himself looking down the wrong end of a gun and, sometime in the future when his son is grown up, he will be expected to exact revenge in his name. Determined that his boy will lead an innocent life away from crime, he announces his plans to retire. It is a decision that is not welcomed by his boss, Nick Gusto (Richard Conte, who calls a meeting with his fellow Mafiosi kingpins, Parisian Carré (Roger Hanin), German Grünwald (everyone’s favourite Nazi, Anton Diffring, in an uncredited performance) and the Milanese Cutitta (Lino Troisi), to discuss the situation. The inevitable outcome is that the quartet believe Arzenta knows too much and that, if he really wants out, then the only way out for him that is agreeable for them is in a coffin. Gusto arranges a bomb to be planted in Arzenta’s car but disaster strikes when it is the hitman’s beloved wife and child killed in the explosion rather than him. From that moment on, Arzenta vows vengeance on the mob who killed his family and methodically sets about taking them down one by one, evading numerous attempts on his own life in the process.

On the surface then, Tessari’s film follows the standard formula of many a Eurocrime movie, concentrating as it does upon the Mafia and including numerous familiar tropes such as bottles of J&B on display, rampant misogynistic violence, and child killings. However, in Arzenta’s relentless quest for revenge, the movie also becomes a vigilante film, a sub-genre in the Eurocrime Filoni that would come to prominence in the following year’s Street Law, directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring Franco Nero, and numerous Italian imitators that would go on to chase the success of Michael Winner’s Death Wish (also from 1974, though Street Law arrived in cinemas first).

Another example of Tony Arzenta standing somewhat apart from the conventions of contemporary Italian Filoni lies in the decision to cast Alain Delon in the lead role. The character of a taciturn hitman was not a new one for the French film star, having memorably played the assassin Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 classic Le Samourai, and Tessari is deliberately recalling that performance here in the role of a gunman whose destiny seems preordained. Delon’s performance is a committed one (he certainly saw something in the movie, as evinced by his decision to produce it), presenting a memorable anti-hero in the role of Tony Arzenta. It’s a more complex and rich character than most on offer and the film conveys the dichotomy of a ruthless, ghost-like assassin who is also a quiet, loving family man. That air of quietness inherent in all aspects of Arzenta intensifies to an almost deafening degree once he sets out on his path of revenge, with Delon depicting a brooding and haunted loner with nothing to lose.

Perhaps inspired by France’s particular take on the noir, Tessari delivers a more downbeat approach to the Eurocrime genre than most. From the pot-bellied Mafiosi slapping their painted molls around and overseeing gaudy discothèques whose live lesbian-sex floor shows are accompanied by a blare of Keith Mansfield-style library music, to the the punch-ups in misty, drizzly and puddle-strewn Milanese scrapyards, Tony Arzenta is a movie that looks utterly seedy and devoid of glamour. The violence is frequent and brutal, especially when directed at the women in the cast. Erika Blanc plays an unnamed Italian sex worker savagely beaten in the corridors of a hotel in Copenhagan just as a means by Grünwald’s heavies to lure Arzenta outside in a bullet-strewn ambush, whilst Carla Gravina’s Sandra, Carré’s moll who sells him out to Arzenta after one too many beatings, is similarly beaten by Cutitta’s leering henchmen, her cries drowned out by classical music on the stereo. Arzenta’s hits upon the mob bossess and their bodyguards who wish him dead are also strikingly bloody and shot with élan by Tessari. For example, Carré’s death on board a train bound for Hamburg proves particular memorable and rather Giallo-like in its pleasing gruesomeness; Arzenta shoots him, his body smashes through the window behind him and, caught between his fallen bodyguard inside the carriage and the tunnel beyond, he hangs limply, hitting every light as the train hurtles past.

Tessari also understands the hypocrisy and propensity for betrayal that forms the shaky foundations of the mob and its ethos. “We don’t kill innocents!” Gusto screams upon learning that Arzenta’s wife and child were slain in the botched hit, and certainly what follows could be construed as Arzenta’s adherence to that code and his refusal to let what he perceives as his bosses’ betrayal of it lie. Except that, in a brilliantly staged car chase between Gusto’s hitmen and Arzenta early on, our protagonist thinks nothing of driving into oncoming traffic and causing a head-on collision with an innocent that leaves their car concertinaed and looking pretty fatal. Likewise, in our introduction to the character, he is unconcerned about shooting a man dead who has disturbed his hit on a mob rival. Wrong place, wrong time seems to be an acceptable clause within the code for Arzenta, but he is naturally unable to allow that same excuse to stand for Gusto et al when it is his own family who are murdered. Ultimately, Tessari’s film knows implicitly what Arzenta expressed reservations about for his child all along – violence begats violence. Though perhaps the real message of the movie ought to be – if you’re a mob hitman and you want out, don’t announce it to your boss, just take your family and disappear.

Radiance’s release comprises of a newly restored print, presented to Blu-ray in the UK for the first time, a select-scene commentary with critic Peter Jilmstad that places emphasis on the movie’s supporting cast which comprises of many familiar faces for admirers of 70s Italian cinema, a video essay from the inimitable Mike Malloy on the film’s place within the annals of Eurocrime and a 1973 archival interview with Delon. The release is topped off by a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by scholar Leila Wimmer and a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on the film’s original posters.

Mark’s Archive – Tony Arzenta (1973)