Gladiator’s Oliver Reed Delivers in REVOLVER
Revolver stars the late, great Oliver Reed, who made his cinema swansong in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. In Gladiator, he played a hardened gladiator-master. Fans of that film will see where Reed drew inspiration for that character; Revolver shows an earlier, tougher version of that personality that Reed played so well.
In Revolver, Reed stars as an associate prison warden who comes home to find his wife has been kidnapped. The ransom? Let one of his prisoners escape in exchange for getting her back. That’s the easy part-what happens after the jailbreak takes the viewer through a big maze of plot twists and surprises. Revolver is definitely unpredictable and well worth a look.
The best part of this film is watching Oliver Reed play a conflicted; hard-as-nails tough guy with a single weakness-he’ll do anything to get his wife back. By the time the film is over he has gone on the run from the law, received (and handed out) brutal beatings and becomes tangled in an international political conspiracy.
This film is every bit as dark as the old film noir classics starring Humphrey Bogart like The Big Sleep. Revolver includes great, memorable dialogue; “It’s better to be killed by a friend”. The ad line for the film says it all; “Whoever pulls the trigger holds the truth.
” If you love your cinema dark and brooding, this is the movie for you. It also boasts a great soundtrack by long-time Italian favorite Ennio Morricone, who also did the music for The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.
Revolver languished in obscurity for many years, a highly sought-after cult item on the ‘grey market’ bootleg circuit. It did get released in America as “Blood in the Streets” but was nowhere near as popular is it is becoming now.
Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie have both paid tribute to Italian cinema with visual and soundtrack nods in movies like House of 1000 Corpses, Kill Bill 1 & 2, and many others. Reservoir Dogs pays a small tribute to Revolver’s opening moments where two robbers escape a heist, one shot in the stomach. Instead of Fabio Testi and his sidekick, Tarantino had Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in a nice homage to this fabulous action/crime drama.
The debt that movie lovers owe to Tarantino and Zombie for drawing attention to films like Revolver is enormous. This new attention to Italian cinema means more incentive for companies like Blue Underground to release the classics of yesteryear from Italy. If they are all as good as Revolver, Americans are in for quite a treat.
In 2002, the excellent Blue Underground acquired the rights to release the film in America, and now it’s available in all its uncut, wide screen, hard-boiled glory. The film itself looks great, beautifully restored with rich color and great sound. The disc includes some nice extras, including interviews with director Sergio Sollima and Oliver Reed’s co-star Fabio Testi. Other extras include talent bios, radio ads and the two trailers for the movie.
