Blood and Diamonds

The next best thing to living through the Italian cinema boom of the ‘70s…is living through the digital restoration and renaissance we happen to be experiencing right now!  And writer/director Fernando Di Leo has been fairly well represented, with many of his seminal crime films – like Milan Caliber 9 – rising from the celluloid graveyard to claim their rightful place among the most influential genre films of the era.  But Blood and Diamonds (1977) finds his career, and that of the poliziotteschi in general, on the wane; so much so that the working title was Rome Caliber 9, an attempt to grab the attention of fading audience interest.

 But Di Leo’s film is certainly interesting enough to stand on its own.  Set in the familiar criminal underworld, Guido Mauri(Claudio Cassinelli)  is a safecracker pinched on the job by an anonymous tip that sends him to prison for five years.  Upon release, his wife is murdered in a roadside ambush that Guido blames on his old boss, Rizzo (Martin Balsam), even though there’s no compelling evidence.  On a mission for revenge, Guido sets out to hijack a planned diamond job and even the odds against the organization that did him wrong.

 

Moodier and more subdued than Di Leo’s earlier work, Blood and Diamonds is still far from a think-piece.  The highlights remain moments of violence and confrontation – including a fistfight that could challenge John Carpenter’s They Live for sheer audacious brutality.  But with his bedroom eyes and rock-star hair, actor Claudio Cassinelli is the perfect cipher for the next generation of Italian criminal.  Di Leo delights in stringing his audience along with a character who drifts through the film with an intangible fragility, setting us up for an emotional explosion of vengeance…that turns out to be misguided.  

 

Other highlights include the always gorgeous Barbara Bouchet as a nightclub dancer-cum-femme fatale and Pier Paolo Capponi as a single-minded thug who loves his job a little too much.  But it’s Martin Balsam – in the token American role – who really elevates the material, turning his one-note role of a crime boss into the coda of a personal tragedy.  Blood and Diamonds may not be an essential title, but it still top-tier Di Leo.

 

And the Blu-ray package from 88 Films is really something special as well, sporting an impressive 4K restoration.  Extras include a featuring length documentary on Di Leo’s career, 20-minute interview with frequent collaborator Luc Merenda (still looking unbelievably cool), commentary track from Troy Howarth, Italian opening and closing credits, liner notes and a slick fold-out poster plus slipcover.  

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