‘Gang War in Milan’ or — Lenzi Does a Visconti?
Umberto Lenzi’s ‘Gang War in Milan’ (1973), or ‘Scorching Hot Milan’, is a shocking film although not due to any of Lenzi’s typically outrageous violence (although you’ll certainly find that here) but because it’s actually got some depth. Sure, that depth might be shallow, daft and somewhat stupid but it’s there nonetheless.
Mob boss, and head of Milan’s largest prostitution operation, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Cangemi (Antonio Sabàto), discovers one of his girls dead in the swimming pool of the club Skorpion. The coroner claims she was drowned in seawater proving something of a mystery as Milan is nowhere near the ocean.
However, this mystery doesn’t last long as it soon transpires she was killed by French drug king-pin, Le Capitaine (Philippe Leroy), as a way of pressuring Toto into forming a reluctant partnership where Toto’s network of prostitutes will be used to sell the Frenchman’s drugs to their clients.
Toto doesn’t like to be bossed around so fights back meaning it’s not long until an eye-for-an-eye war is taking place between the two organisations on the streets of Milan and escalating retaliation is the order of the day.
‘Gang War in Milan’ starts off in a deceptive fashion, the shots of commodified women set against the Milanese cityscape bearing a striking similarity to the dehumanised mannequins and isolated body parts at the start of Mario Bava’s ‘Blood and Black Lace’ (1964) suggesting this might be a Giallo we’re in for, but we soon discover that most certainly isn’t the case. Yet neither is this a full-blown poliziotteschi with any police involvement being purely on the periphery and never really intruding on proceedings.
It’s also, surprisingly for Lenzi, almost entirely action free meaning there’s no car chases, shoot-outs or chaotic set-pieces. There’s still Lenzi’s taste for violence here but it’s focused on specific acts of retribution rather than general mayhem.
Instead, it’s more a gangland noir mixed with elements of Italian post-war melodrama with emotional histrionics on display more than bullet-riddled carnage, although the biggest comparison is the one Lenzi himself made when he said his film owed less to movies like ‘The Godfather’ (1972) and more to Visconti’s ‘Rocco and His Brothers’ (1960) and, you know what, he’s not wrong as ‘Gang War in Milan’ could almost be a 1970’s extension or continuation of Visconti’s epic… and I never thought I’d be comparing Umberto Lenzi to Visconti!
Toto is Sicilian, he and his family having moved from the South to the North to pursue, like many did, the dream of a better life. Yet, for all his appearance of newly acquired urban sophistication Toto still clings to certain Sicilian values and ways of doing things he can’t quite shake off and it’s not long before we realise this more old-fashioned attitude might only take Toto so far in a city where new ways of thinking are required.
And when mafia godfather Billy Barone is brought over from Chicago to help Toto find more nuanced ways to bring down their rival we’re not just dealing with Italy’s Southern Question and the effects of internal migration but also the Americanisation of the peninsula and the power the U.S. exerted there.
So yeah, there’s some real issues being dealt with here although this is still an Umberto Lenzi flick so it’s all wrapped up in sleaze, violence and infantile machismo, but the characters, story and the way it’s all executed (this is a well made and consistently good looking film) make for an involving and gripping experience and even if it might not have a tonne of explosive action it’s a seriously fast moving flick.
‘Gang War in Milan’ might not Lenzi’s most exciting movie but with that little bit of depth (and I could be giving this film WAY more credit than it deserves) it’s certainly one of his most genuinely interesting.
