User Reviews

Italian crime director Fernando Di Leo has helmed heavyweight gangster thrillers far more unsavory than this relatively lightweight 'David vs. Goliath' mobster melodrama with Oscar winner Jack Palance in the title role. The no-nonsense Peter Berling & Fernando Di Leo screenplay establishes both character and plot for the first forty-five minutes of this young Turks revenge yarn and then during the last half-hour blends gunfights galore with comic relief. This average but entertaining urban crime drama depicts the rise and fall of Palance as the head of his own crime syndicate in Italy. Although it would help to see this amoral shoot'em saga in a letterboxed version with good sound, "Mister Scarface" combines elements of far superior American racketeering narratives like "Mean Streets" and "The Godfather." Di Leo's "Manhunt" a.k.a. "Italian Connection" with Mario Adorf and "The Big Boss" a.k.a. "Wipe Out" with Henry Silva surpass "Mister Scarface" in terms of their sheer amount of violence and bloodshed. Hooligans aren't fed like cordwood into a blazing furnace, and women & children aren't run down in the streets by Volkswagen buses. Long-time Di Leo collaborator Luis Enríquez Bacalov provides a serviceable jazz score to heighten the suspense and tension.

"Mr. Scarface" opens with a dreamy slow motion scene where two criminals enter a household with a satchel of loot. One of them, Manzari (Jack Palance of "Shane"), shoots his unnamed partner (Fulvio Mingozzi of "Django Against Sartana"), and awakens a sleeping child. The lad seizes the pistol that Manzari has laid aside and tries to shoot Manzari, except that Manzari's pistol is now empty. Manzari smacks the kid around.

The scene shifts fifteen years later as a twentysomething hood, Tony (Harry Baer of "The Venus Trap"), tools around town in a souped-up, red Puma GT dune buggy collecting protection money from storeowners for his boss, Luigi Cherico (Edmund Purdom of "City of the Walking Dead"), a racketeer that runs a gambling hall with an army of henchmen. A young man, Rick (Al Cliver of "2020 Texas Gladiators"), gets in a card game at Luigi's and loses. A fight erupts later between Rick and Luigi's hoods and they run Rick off. Later, Rick returns with Manzari and his army of thugs. Tony and an older criminal, Vinchenzo Napoli (Vittorio Caprioli of "Moving Target"), watch Manzari enter Luigi's gambling parlor, Napoli observes that just looking at Manzari makes his anus 'twitch.' Manzari's thugs rough up Luigi's minions and then Manzari takes three million lira from Luigi and gives him a check.

Once Manzari takes care of Luigi's men, he lectures Rick about his gambling losses. "If you don't know which table to sit at, don't go gambling, you know what I mean?" Palance's Scarface adopts the line "you know what I mean" for his signature phrase, and he uses it at least three times so that it becomes identified with his wicked character. "If a man gets taken as a sucker, he can't be one of mine." Manzari has a tiny crescent scar on his left cheek and he smokes a cigarette in a holder. Manzari's men beat up Rick and leave him sprawled on the street. Tony comes along and lets Rick heal up from his beating at his place. Rick dreams up a scheme to scam Manzari. Tony and an actor that they hire masquerade as 'Finance Ministry' officials. They visit Manzari's office decked out in official uniforms to inspect the mob boss's records. Scarface's underling Luca calls him about the situation and Scarface orders him to bribe the official so that he will not see some of Scarface's illegal folders. Scarface authorizes his people to pay Tony and the Finance imposter approximately 10 million lira. Later, Luigi blows a gasket when Tony shows up with the three million lira, but he doesn't inform his associates about the other 7 million lira. Previous another of Luigi's hoods had ridiculed Tony because Tony wanted to move up in the organization and collect from bigger clients.

Scarface dispatches his thugs to bust heads in retaliation for the scam. Luca (Roberto Reale of "Being Twenty") tracks down the actor that impersonated the Finance Minister and shoots him with a silenced pistol in the head as he is concluding a performance on stage at a theatre. A frightened Luigi decides to clear out of town and leaves his affairs to an underling, Peppi (Enzo Pulcrano of "The Kidnap Syndicate"), and Peppi shoots Luigi in the head in the movie's biggest surprise. (You were warned about spoilers!) Peppi joins forces with Manzari and prepares a list of places where Luca and his boys can find Tony and Rick. Rick saunters into the late Luigi's gambling parlor and shoots Peppi several times with a silenced automatic. All hell then breaks loose in the last forty-five minutes with a minor gunfight where Rick blows away three of Manzari's thugs that try to string up Napoli because he would reveal the whereabouts of Rick and Tony, and ultimately in a massive gun battle takes place at an old, derelict slaughter house factory where Manzari gets his comeuppance and we learn Rick's true identity.

"Mister Scarface" contains minimal nudity and some profanity, including use of the F-word. Di Leo doesn't linger on anything and keeps the story moving forward at all times. Ironically, Jack Palance's lethal gangster boasts that nobody in his organization qualifies as a sucker and hubris turns out to be his undoing when the Tony and Rick scam him. Our low-level criminal protagonist spend most of their time defending themselves from higher up hoods so they can be classified as sympathetic heroes. Di Leo appears to have lensed everything in authentic Italian locations. Napoli, the older hood, supplies the comic relief, particularly in an amusing scene during the shoot out in the slaughterhouse factory when he has trouble killing a Manzari ruffian. Typically, "Mister Scarface" appears in public domain collections along with other European public domain movies.

As the end of level boss of The Boss (1973-also reviewed) wrapped up the Milieu Trilogy, I was pleased to find that Raro Video had included one extra title to round up the set, leading to me discovering who rules the city.

View on the film:

Closing their box set, Raro Video present a pristine transfer, with the picture being clean and the audio being sharp, and joined by a very good making of.

Backed by an unusual tribal Jazz score from his regular composer of this period Luis Bacalov, co-writer (with Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972-also reviewed) actor Peter Berling ) / directing auteur Fernando Di Leo & The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971-also reviewed) cinematographer Erico Menczer cycle into a hard nose Italian Crime/ Poliziotteschi atmosphere, which continues to build on Di Leo's recurring motifs, with Di Leo expanding on his use of extended first-person shots from the striking opening, which Di Leo blends with slow-motion, in order for the viewer to feel right next to each sly punch and bullet to the head unleashed, exploding in Di Leo joyfully continuing to twirl glittering dancing and song sequence into the tough underworld.

Driving round with Tony (played with a razor edge swagger by Harry Baer) is his dune buggy, Di Leo loads up the set-pieces with his distinctive, ultra-stylized blunt force, rolling from break-neck motorbike chases in rush hour traffic, (which looks to have been illegally filmed) to tasty crash-zooms and jagged whip-pans hitting Tony attempting to take on ruthless gang leader Manzari (played with a wonderful gruffness by Jack Palance.)

Hanging out with Tony doing his job as a debt collector for the gangsters, the screenplay by Di Leo and Berling take a notable departure from the Milieu Trilogy, via the inclusion of (intended) comedy,most prominent in Tony's playful team-up with fellow former mob enforcer/turned wanting to show the gangsters who the real boss is, Napoli.

Despite their best attempts, the writers are never fully able to slot the comedy into the tense, unfolding Italian Crime action,due to the tries to bring jokes into the mix, resulting in everything else going into stop/start mode.

When not trying to find a punch-line, the writers brilliantly continue to explore the major themes running across Di Leo's works, from the value Tony and Napoli place on their friendship, in an underworld where loyalty can be shot down at any moment, to a fantastic Slasher-style opening, which draws Tony as someone who has no backing, as he fights to rule the city.

Also known as Rulers of the City, The Big Boss and Blood and Bullets, this was directed by Fernando Di Leo. He started his career mainly being known for his writing, including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Massacre Time, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man and so many more. He co-wrote it with Peter Berling, who was often in Kalus Kinski movies before writing a series of conspiracy novels about the Priory of Sion.

Tony (Henry Baer) works as a money collector for Cherico (Edmund Purdom) but he dreams of leaving his life of crime behind and settling on the beaches of Brazil. He decides to fast forward all the hard work of being a henchman by working with Rick (Al Cliver) and Napoli (Vittorio Caprioli) to rob the biggest boss of all, Scarface Manzari (Jack Palance).

It takes its time getting there, with Tony mostly cracking wise, cracking schools and, well, cracking smiles at the many ladies he sees during his days and nights of collecting blood money. He would have never even considered going after Scarface if he didn't kill Cherico instead of repaying his debt. By the end, our hero has tracked his enemy - actually, his lifelong enemy, even if we don't get that knowledge for some time - to a slaughterhouse where he wipes out the entire family.

Added bonus: Gisela Hahn (Devil Hunter, White Pop Jesus, Disco Fieber) is in the cast. And man, Jack Palance is so macho that he even makes a cigarette holder look manly. Like, the same kind of long effete cigarette holder that, let's say, Cruella de Vil would use.

I read a couple of good reviews on this board for "Mr. Scarface", but for anyone uninitiated in the genre of Italian gangster films like myself, the picture will probably make very little sense. Indeed, after the initial setup involving the ten million lira scam, the picture devolved into a fairly routine revenge flick with a minor twist in the identity of Rick's (Al Cliver) character. The whole gang war plot got muddied up for me with the inclusion of Vinchenzo Napoli (Vittorio Caprioli), but as most other viewers commented, he's about the only one who gave this picture any life with his often ineffective attempts at violence. I found it somewhat unbelievable that Manzari's goons who chased Tony through the streets didn't actually stroke out before Tony even laid a hand on them. For all of his buildup as the title character, Jack Palance was wasted rather unceremoniously in an anticlimactic near finale, making the U.S. working title, "Mr. Scarface", rather moot. I've seen enough spaghetti Westerns to know that they don't all work; I guess in this case, my first look at a spaghetti gangster flick didn't quite make it either.

What a deception that straight to the garbage can crime flick. Especially if you compare it to the other films made by this very powerful director from the other side of the Alps. I usually see every thing what Fernando Di Leo makes. Except maybe his very last film, or nearly, in 1985, starring Henry Silva, that I have commented. But this one is even worse. Even the final climax is totally awful. That's the comedy touch that destroy everything here. I am not used to this in Italian crime films. The actors are terrible, and not terrific...And this feature lacks tragedy.

What a waste of time for this crap. I am lucky not to have seen many of this kind.

Forget it, avoid it at all costs.

This appears to be a bad knock-off of a gangster film. In the opening scene we see Scarface (Jack Palance) get his scar. He shoots a man several times, as the man waves his arms, going into a comic death scene, he throws a glass ashtray (?) at the robber and nicks him in the face. This robber goes on to become a tough crime boss who smoke cigarettes with a long cigarette holder.

Tony (Harry Baer) is a strong arm collection man with a rich cousin in Brazil. He meets another collector, one who works for Scarface and has less acting credentials. They devise a plan to scam some money and go to Brazil.

The dubbing was bad. The transfer was bad. Acting and plot were bad. Fat men in muscle tees.

Parental Guide: F-bomb (I think- bad sound too) brief nudity.

Fernando Di Leo was responsible for a trio of absolutely great poliziotteschi films – Milan Calibre 9, The Boss and The Italian Connection. All of them were dynamic and energetic with great characters and inspired action. Unfortunately, Rulers of the City is nowhere near as good and is a significantly lesser movie.

It's about a young, minor protection money collector who carries out a scam to steal 10 million lira from the city's top gangster leading to all-out gang war.

Jack Palance and Edmund Purdom are perhaps the biggest stars here. They both play the respective crime bosses and both are wasted in their roles to be perfectly honest. Purdom only gets to mope around for a bit and then is shot in the head, while Palance should really be a bigger, more threatening presence but he never is. He hovers in the background but never gets to assert his authority very much. The movie is promoted in a way that makes you believe that Palance is the big bad guy but he is killed off way before the end of the climax in a somewhat underwhelming scene. The final shoot-out sequence in the old slaughterhouse is pretty uninvolving in general. The bad guys are pretty hopeless throughout the movie. They are thwarted at every turn easily by the heroes who are three men in a dune buggy (great vehicle to drive around town in when you are trying to keep a low profile by the way). These guys never feel like they are ever under threat and as a result there is little suspense. There is additionally a revenge plot-line running concurrently. It begins with a slow-motion dream-like encounter from the past and the whole thing really reminded me of the sort of plot that you would find in a spaghetti western. But again, it isn't very well done and could actually have been removed entirely with little or no damage to the film at all.

Rulers of the City is a pretty mediocre Italian crime film. It pales by comparison to others in Di Leo's filmography.

An OK Italian crime thriller from director Fernando Di Leo. Harry Baer is a low level collector for a mafia don who swindles a rival Mafioso (Jack Palance) out of some money. The rival wants revenge. Baer and his clever cohorts thwart Palance and his goons at every turn. Not exactly the action packed thriller you'd expect from Di Leo, but still fairly entertaining. Baer gives an energetic performance and most of the supporting players are great. Palance, who's top-billed though off screen much of the time, smokes and growls. He's called "Scarface" throughout (he has a pronounced scar over his left eye). The music by Luis Enriquez Bacalov is dynamite and the photography by Erico Menczer captures a particularly sunny Rome circa 1976. Edmund Purdom appears briefly.