Gambling City

Luca, a professional gambler, says he never cheats at the table, and he does not. When he enters the arrangement run by a casino boss in Milan the stakes change: games he is supposed to lose, debts that have to be paid, and killings under the table. The film is not interested in gambling. It is interested in the cost of honesty: playing straight is what makes Luca a candidate for death, and the film does not reward him for it. The hard ending customary in Italian crime cinema of the seventies fits here. The form is poliziottesco: Milan streets, fast car sequences, nightclubs and sudden violence. The card scenes are held long and the tension is built on the deal. Sergio Martino directed. He was making giallo and crime films back to back in those years, and this is among the most orderly told examples of the genre. Luc Merenda plays Luca and Enrico Maria Salerno the boss. Merenda was one of the constant faces of Italian crime films at the time. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies Italian crime and gambling films. Who it is not for: anyone after depth of character. The supporting parts are thin, the female character is purely functional and the plot never leaves the genre template.