“Blindman” director Ferdinando Baldi’s violent, mafia-themed, narcotics-trafficking thriller “The Sicilian Connection,” starring Ben Gazzara, Steffen Zacharias, and Fausto Tozzi, qualifies as a slam-bang, action-packed saga. Gazzara plays Joe Coppola, an audacious New Yorker who flies to Sicily to establish an opium/morphine/heroin pipeline from Turkey via Sicily, with the Big Apple as the final destination for his contraband. Gazzara is ideally cast as a smiling, thick-skinned criminal of considerable resource who has been engaged in the illicit drug trade for years. Now, Coppola sets out to make a big splash. Nevertheless, in the tradition of all mafia-themed, Euro crime stories, treachery is rampant, since nobody can trust anybody, and surprises constantly keep both criminals and the authorities on a tightrope. The shocking opening essentially foreshadows the shocking finale!
When Baldi helmed this exciting little actioneer, he stuck to the venerable Hollywood edict that ‘crime cannot pay.’ In other words, nobody succeeds in this complicated, multi-million-dollar venture which could serve as a companion piece to Robert Stevenson’s “To The Ends of the Earth” (1946) with Dick Powell, a Treasury Agent who follows the trail of opium from China to Egypt and finally New York. Baldi collaborated on the script with “Hell Raiders of the Deep” scenarist Duilio Coletti, and they keep the surprises coming in this 100-minute gangland opera but never wears out their welcome.
The opening scene of “The Sicilian Connection” is a genuine showstopper. Indeed, this gruesome encounter serves as a template for everything that ensues. An intrepid police inspector interrupts the funeral of a respected high-ranking mafia figure. He demands to examine the funeral permits without considering the plight of the grieving mourners. Not surprisingly, the mafia soldiers and the family attending the funeral are not amused. Nevertheless, they endure his painstaking interference without protest. Just when they think this suspicious cop is going to let them proceed with their funeral, he demands to eyeball the corpse. It seems the corpse was embalmed in Turkey, so now the inspector insists they strip the body. According to the dead man’s papers, he died of a respiratory ailment. Imagine the cop’s curiosity when they open the funeral shroud and discover the pale corpse has a gash running from his throat to his navel. Whoever stitched the dead man’s chest together did a shoddy job. You can see through the crevice in the corpse’s torso to something inside his chest cavity. As it turns out, the inspector was correct in assuming that packets of cocaine were stashed in the corpse. By this time, the mafia lieutenants overseeing the funeral have had enough of their nosey cop. Just as the inspector is congratulating himself on his discovery, he seems to have forgotten that he is alone, by himself, surrounded by the mafia. Suddenly, the mafia soldiers seize him and thrust his protesting arms and legs atop the dead man. Despite his cries of protest, the fear-stricken man struggles in horror as the mafia thugs screw the nails down on the coffin lid and bury their soldier with the crying inspector in the ground.
The next thing we know, we are introduced to Joe Coppola in a Sicilian restaurant. He asks for some coke, and the owner of the restaurant slips him a couple of packets of coke in a folded napkin. Coppola inquires about the whereabouts of a mafia kingpin with whom he can conduct business. Everything treats Coppola with considerable suspicion until they establish his credentials and then they educate him about not only the difficulties of selling him the large quantities that he wants but also the extreme cost and the various people to whom he must ingratiate himself. No, “The Sicilian Connection” is not without some shooting and killing, but it covers the logistics of smuggling the narcotics from Europe into New York.
This is truly an insightful thriller with an ending that you won’t expect.
No comments:
Post a Comment