The Hired Killer (1966)

I wanted to but couldn't!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Listen, daddy-o, I'm just gonna lay this one ya straight. This flick involves a cat who rubs out gangsters for the dough, but he's hip enough to twig that it aint no long term gig and figures on beating the gravel and splitting the scene, dig? He really knows his groceries.His boss offers him fifty yards to polish some creep with a new face but the hitman don't think that's chilli. Once his brother takes a few bullets to the chest he noodles it out and reckons he'll take the bread. His boss however teams him up with some guy who might be everything plus (Franco Nero), but also might be looking to become a bit of a big wheel. They two of them cop a breeze and head to Europe to cast an eyeball on their victim. Problem is, this square has had facial surgery so they don't know what he looks like! While our hitman is out quail hunting, two guys fall on Nero and give him a beating. Things get goopy when one thing leads to another and they rub out the wrong Murgatroid. Aint that a party pooper? Maybe they should haul ass back to the US and forget the whole thing?Our hitman reckons someone's been singing to The Man and that there's a stoolie around, which gets him frosted. What he's facing might be tough tonails but he ain't gonna be the one left holding the bag. He's got x-ray eyes, man. He's with it. So out come the guns which is always a zonk on the head...Turn up the stereo: This film razzed my berries. Nero plays a Mazda with peepers who speaks the lingo. The hitman guy is Madison Avenue who gets his kicks. It never does go ape like those seventies crime movie, but is never Dullsville either. There's plenty of hot iron action.Now put an egg in your shoe and beat it

That was the title when I saw it a long, long, time ago, and I would still rate it one of the best "assassin/assassination" flicks, before "The Day of The Jackal" (1973), etc. I can hardly remember the details, and hope to see it again, soon, to validate the reason why it has stuck in my mind for so long. Robert Webber was very effective in the role, and the detailed treatment of the "sniper" action made the movie. Many aspects of the film have become recurring themes in a whole lot of movies that came after. For the time being, I gave it 7 out of 10, until I can have a chance to view it again.

This is a fairly quiet movie, more French in tone than Italian starring veteran Hollywood actor, Robert Webber and featuring an early appearance by Franco Nero, who would the same year go on to star in Django and never look back. In this though he looks and sounds (well in my dub) more like the fictional character, Clark Kent. Webber carries most of the film in a most assured manner and though there is not masses of action, interest is well held by director Prosperi (he of Mondo movie fame). Engaging from the wordless beginning the movie has a good feel and plays more like a noir than an Italian 60s crime movie. Soundtrack surprises too and instead of a steady lush score of some abrasive industrial sound this a real mixture ranging from 60s pop to full on orchestral. There is a car chase and there are fights and shootings, even slight sex and drugs inclusion but basically a decent story carefully told.

Mondo pioneer Franco Prosperi proved himself a more than capable director of narrative cinema with this intriguing suspense feature. Robert Webber stars as Clint Harris, a morose, high-paid New York hit-man sent on assignment to Paris to locate and eliminate the mysterious Frank Secchy, who's making a move on Manhattan's criminal underworld and was also responsible for the murder of Clint's brother. Compelled by his boss (Cec Linder, the original Felix Leiter from Goldfinger) to take along deadweight sidekick Tony Lo Bello (a very young looking Franco Nero), Clint runs into trouble with a heroin-addicted woman who holds the key to Secchy's whereabouts. There's lots of shooting, some great Big Apple location footage for the first couple of reels, a fine score by Robby Poiteven, a twist ending, and even a night club scene where Take A Heart, the great freakbeat anthem by The Sorrows, plays out in its entirety. The film is decent in a washed-out, pan and scan print, so I imagine it would look great on disc. Here's hoping.