REVOLVER

The great Oliver Reed stars in Sergio Sollima’s rambunctious, Morricone-scored Poliziotteschi about an ex-cop turned Italian prison warden whose wife is kidnapped.

After a run of highly successful Spaghetti Westerns, including 1966’s The Big Gundown with Lee Van Cleef, genre expert Sergio Sollima tackled the colourfully violent criminal underworld in this 1973 poliziotteschi, which imported hard-drinking British thespian Olivier Reed to the action of the Italian streets.

Reed plays a cop turned Roman prison warden whose wife is kidnapped, and who is forced to release a petty thief as part of the ransom demand. The hunt for the kidnappers results in a twisty, action-packed potboiler that spirals across the continent, as the distinction between ruthless warden and escaped criminal blurs and Sollima lands some ferociously pointed commentary on crime and punishment. Revolver also features arguably one of Ennio Morricone’s greatest scores, which would be later repurposed in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

"Beneath the B-movie sleaze of this Italian thriller is a powerful, angry film containing one of Oliver Reed’s best performances." – Birth.Movies.Death