The Last Round Review

Stelvio Massi’s The Last Round is an unusual little number, an Italian reworking of A Fistful of Dollars that includes such obvious details as the music box but updates the film as a violent, sexualized mob thriller directed by a man who helped shoot Leone’s spaghetti classic a dozen years earlier starring a Frenchman as the mob boss and a former Argentinean boxing champion in the Eastwood role as a righteous drifter with, ironically, a dislike of guns. While Massi’s film never scales the same heights as the Leone work that forms its base it is, nevertheless, a taut and effective little film well deserving of a broader audience and the quality DVD treatment it is receiving from NoShame.

Carlos Monzon stars as Marco a former mercenary turned drifter from southern Italy who arrives in a nameless northern industrial town looking for work. The first thing he finds, however, is a group of workers being fired and violently driven away from a factory owned by the Manzetti family, who he quickly learns are one of two dominant local crime groups. After delivering a brief, heavily leftist monologue on the dignity of the worker, one that convinces the factory thugs that he is a union agitator, Marco sets to with his fists. He lays waste to the goons only to eventually be felled by a rock heaved at the back of his head by the youngest Manzetti brother and is literally hauled out with the trash. Taken in by a blind girl and her self appointed guardian, poor but noble people, Marco learns the lay of the land and embarks on a plan to set the two local crime families against each other for the betterment of the common folk. But is it as simple and noble as that or does Marco have some hidden history, a personal reason to get involved? What is the story behind the music box he carries everywhere with him?

Driven by the performances of Monzon as Marco and Luc Merenda as the crime lord Rico Manzetti The Last Round is a prime example of lean, energetic 70’s crime film. Monzon is the type of anti-hero that prospered in the 70’s and then faded away, a man of few words and a glowering intensity rather than particularly good looks. Am I surprised that he had a history of spousal abuse and was eventually jailed for killing his wife? Not even a little. Merenda, on the other hand, has matinee good looks a fact he gleefully plays against as the sexually predatory Rico. There’s no room for discussion or feeling in this world, these are men of action proving themselves with their fists and guns. And the women? Universally beautiful and helpless, existing either to be victimized by Rico or saved by Marco. Every single female character flashes flesh on at least one occasion but Massi steers the nudity away from exploitation and titillation as virtually all the nudity occurs in unpleasant circumstances.

While The Last Round is primarily a straightforward crime thriller Massi does have some higher intentions as well. He’s not particularly subtle about it and it’s not a major thread of the film but Massi does make a point of weaving some political and social subtext into the film. Shot at a time when widespread unemployment was leading to political unrest and regional tensions Massi makes sure to throw in some class and race politics. Marco’s political speech mentioned above is obviously meant to be sincere with Massi appealing obviously to the working man. The poor are ugly but noble. The rich beautiful but treacherous. Marco explicitly casts himself as a protector of the working classes and there are clear references to the tensions between northern and southern Italy. In many ways The Last Round could be a Steve McQueen film, idolizing a brand of tough, blue collar virility.

The DVD release is up to the high standards of quality that are now routine from NoShame. The transfer is from a new restoration taken from the vault negatives. The negatives had sustained a few small sections of damage that were beyond completely fixing but for the most part the transfer is pristine. You have the option of the original Italian with English subtitles or the English dub as well as detailed liner notes, trailers, poster and still galleries and a thirty five minute visit to Luc Merenda’s shop in Paris, where he is now a well established antique dealer. As a fun extra NoShame have even thrown in a second disc, a CD of score music from the classic Italian genre films that are their specialty as played by Entropia.