Few could contest the fact that Oliver Reed experienced some highlights throughout his career in cinema. He acted in films directed by Joseph Losey, Ken Russell, David Cronenberg, Nicolas Roeg, and Terry Gilliam, and was once briefly considered as a potential replacement for Sean Connery as James Bond. Not a great lover of the ‘Hollywood nonsense’, he also turned down some of the major studio deals like the offer to play Quint in Jaws.
However, it is fair to say that today he is more remembered for his hell-raising antics rather than his actual performances on screen, which is unfortunate. Reed himself had to go to Italy during the 1970s when the British film industry was suffering from a dearth of production simply because that country was experiencing a boom in Giallo and movies.
From a political standpoint, the country was pretty unstable and there were constant clashes between the extreme right wing and the extreme left wing. Throughout this period, the number of terrorist attacks and kidnapping cases was also on the rise. The same did not come as a surprise but there were increasing crime dramas that had gangsters, corrupt cops, and shady politicians, which showed the world the discontent grew with the public.
There was a robust demand for tough guy actors, and a number of Italian directors were eager to have Reed in their films. In 1973, he starred in two of the genre pieces. The first was Dirty Weekend by Dino Risi and it wasn’t great. Then came Revolver.
In this film, Reed is Vito Cipriani, the vice governor of a jail in Milan. After an exhausting day at work, where he has to deal with a prisoner with a knife threatening to kill himself, he comes home with the hope of unwinding with his wife Anna (Agostina Belli). Instead, he received an anonymous call informing him that she had been kidnapped. Her abductors are demanding Vito to assist in the escape of an inmate from his prison. That inmate is Milo Ruiz (Fabio Testi), who is a minor criminal and an ex-French Legionnaire.
There’s a twist. Milo has absolutely no idea why anybody would go through the trouble of getting him out of there. Then the real twist is, once he does manage to get out, Vito captures him instead.
Milo’s life is at risk, as Vito believes that the only option the kidnappers would have with free Milo is to kill Steven’s Wife. In this case, Milo becomes a deterrence. At the same time, the people responsible for Anna’s kidnapping may be working for others intending to kill him, leading Milo to infer that there is a danger to his life. Vito and Milo form an alliance, if only for the purpose of learning who is holding Anna hostage.
Revolver is a little too long, but that does not prevent it from being interesting and unpredictable. Sollima’s directing is good and he knows how to shoot the action, even directing his own fight scenes. Each character has a different style of fighting that is designed to fit and reflect their personality. At times, the score by Ennio Morricone is beautiful, but at other times he builds the suspense superbly. One of the best pieces, Un Amico, was unfortunately ‘stolen’ by Quentin Tarantino for his movie Inglourious Basterds.
Fabio Testi most certainly brings out the best of the character on paper, however, Reed absolutely shines. You could never tell from his performance that the man was drinking very heavily on the set. It has been known that he was able to compose himself before midday, but he became more and more uncontrollable as the day progressed. Testi had to put up with and continually indulge him to calm down.
There is a possibility that the drinking sessions might have had a silver lining: towards the end of the movie, due to his character looking increasingly more inane by the day, Reed indeed appears to be completely spaced out. The downside, in any case for actress Paola Pitagora, is that the car crash Reed caused while speeding during the shot where they tried to escape from the gas station where they were filming so the police would not catch them gave her an eye injury, that is most probably the reason why she is mostly seen with sunglasses on. Even if a Tough Girl, is the bonus feature of the film, she is able to remember Reed in kind terms, but not everyone feels the same. Irritated by his shenanigans, Sollima thought that some of the people working on the film may try to get even with him at the end of the filming. They were instructed to tell him that Reed would only be able to complete the shooting four days later than he needed to because of some other requirements.
Some unique facets are the limited edition O-Card slipcase, highly recommended new audio commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, a recent interview with Stephen Thrower and Fabio Testi’s archival interview, and a hugely detailed account of Ennio Morricone’s Eurocrime soundtracks and other booklets of Howard Hughes.
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