Alain Delon visits swift, sure vengeance on the ruthless crime family that employed him as a hit-man in the Duccio Tessari thriller "Big Guns" after they accidentally murder his wife and child. Tessari and scenarists Roberto Gandus, Ugo Liberatore of "A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die," and Franco Verucci of "Ring of Death" take this actioneer about a career gunman for the mob right down to the wire. Indeed, "Big Guns" is rather predictable, but it still qualifies as solid entertainment with lots of savage and often sudden killings. Alain Delon of "The Godson" is appropriately laconic as he methodically deals out death to the heads of the mob families who refused to let him retire so that he could enjoy life with his young son and daughter. Richard Conte of "The Godfather" plays a Sicilian crime boss who wants to bury the hatchet with the Delon character, but the rest of his hard-nosed associates want the hit-man dead. Like most crime thrillers in the 1960s and 1970s, "Big Guns" subscribes to the cinematic morality that crime does not pay. Interestingly, the one man who has nothing to do with the murder of the wife and son of the hero survives while another betrays the hero with extreme prejudice. Tessari does not waste a second in this 90-minute shoot'em up. Apart from the mother and son dying in a car bomb meant for the father, the worst thing that takes place occurs in an automobile salvage yard when an associate of the hero is crushed in a junked car. Ostensibly, "Big Guns" is a rather bloodless outing, but it does have a high body count for a 1973 mobster melodrama. Only at the last minute does our protagonist let his guard down and so the contrived morality of an eye for an eye remains intact. Tessari stages a couple of decent car chases and the death of a don in a train traveling through a train tunnel is as bloody as this violent yarn gets. The photography and the compositions are excellent.
Review of No Way Out
