La mano lunga del padrino / The Long Arm of the Godfather

In that the main conflict in this 1972 poliziotto is in fact between rival gangsters, with the police barely making an appearance despite the gunning down of several soldiers and the theft of a consignment of arms, this is this is one of those filone entries which qualifies as a poliziotto in name only.


Groovy credits superimposed over cold blooded killing

It's also a somewhat difficult film to otherwise place. The groovy credits and the breezy lounge score (complete with frequent use of la la la la type male and female vocalism) are at odds with the cynicism, violence and general air of misogyny and/or misanthropy that is otherwise the film's stock in trade. Perhaps tellingly the film was also the only credited work for composer Silvano D'Auria and co-writer and director Nando Bonomi alike.


Casual violence and sadism

Elsewhere we are on more familiar ground, insofar as the other co-writer and editor was Giulio Berruti of Killer Nun note, the three leads are Adolfo Celi, Peter Lee Lawrence and Erica Blanc and many of the gang members familiar faces.

Celi plays the Godfather of the title, Lawrence the treacherous underling who does a double crosses and tries to sell the arms on himself, and Blanc the moll whom he wishes to impress.

The pacing is often somewhat leisurely and the game of cat and mouse not as tense as it could have been.

This is partly down to the characterisation of the leads: Celi’s Don Carmelo is a criminal mastermind in the Thunderball or Danger Diabolik mode, confident he’s always at least one move ahead of everyone else:

Goon: Don't you want revenge?
Don Carmelo: Romantic notions don't interest me. I want the money.

Lawrence’s Vincenzo thinks he is smarter than he actually is, but is also adept at improvising his way out of sticky situations:

Vincenzo: For the moment I'm still winning.
Sabina: Don't count on that.
Vincenzo: I always do.

It is also down to the fact that the action quickly relocates from Italy to somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East, such that we get a fair amount of tourist style sightseeing worked into the narrative.






And something a bit more disturbing, perhaps

Things do get back down to the serious business after a bit, albeit again with some awkward inconsistencies in tone, not least when Blanc’s Sabina is brutalised by one of Don Vincenzo’s thugs to some incongruous but not obviously intentionally ironic musical accompaniment.

In sum, an oddity that doesn’t always work but which isn’t the kind of disaster that its first and only film nature might lead you to assume.

La Mano lunga del padrino / Long Arm of the Godfather

We open with a daring attack on an army convoy carrying a consignment of weapons. But for the technology on display – cars, trucks and submachine guns – it could easily be a scene in a spaghetti western, all the more so when one of the robbers proceeds to make off with the loot, leaving his companions for dead.

As Long Arm of the Godfather's title suggests, however, we're actually in poliziotto territory. In truth, however, the term is something of a misnomer here insofar as no members of the police or other authorities are ever seen ever as taking any interest in the case, which is a curious omission given that you would think that soldiers would be the kind of crime to that attention.




Noir-ish imagery with Lawrence

This is not to say, however, that the perpetrator of the betrayal, Vincenzo, is about to have things easy since his ex-boss Don Carmelo is, as his title indicates, a rather prominent gangster and soon proves to have also survived the incident.

And then there's the issue of actually finding a buyer for the guns...


Erica Blanc, intelligent and charming as ever

Directed and co-written by Nardo Bonomi, whose only credit this is, the latter role in conjuction with Giulio Berutti of Killer Nun fame, this is nasty little crime film where Peter Lee Lawrence / Karl Hirenbach's Vincenzo provides our point of identification almost by default.

About the only things he has going for him in comparison with Adolfo Celi's old school Don are that he is the attractive young underdog aspiring to have his day and is acting at least partly out love, in the form of Erika Blanc's somewhat more level headed and forward thinking moll, Sabina.





Shades of giallo

Otherwise, however, they're cut from much the same cloth, with the action providing that familiar mix of car chases, shootouts, men beating one another and women up to car door slamming type sound effects, and a reasonable degree of suspense over what is going to happen next.


This is the kind of film where the nightclub owner is more interested in whether the dancer can also serve drinks than her primary talents


Yet another savage beating

Though nothing outstanding Bonomi's direction is efficient, with a good use of locations and some eye-catching camera set-ups. The performances are more going through the motions than truly inspired, although there is an added poignancy to the denoument if one is aware Lawrence and Blanc's rumoured real-life relationship and of the actor's subsequent suicide less than two years later.