Tony Arzenta (Big Guns)

By mistake they killed his wife and child – that was a hell of a mistake!

• 

  Duccio Tessari’s Mafia epic is the most explicit – and successful – example of contamination between Italian-style and French film noir. Although the premise and (partly) the setting refer to typical Mafia movies, Big Guns is rather a mimetic, philological rewriting of French polar, and a cinematic hinge between the two genres. … Big Guns displays a stylistic opulence never seen before and after in an Italian film noir. … Yet Big Guns is not simply an exercise in style. The story moves at a brisk pace, structured in an episodic manner like a Cornell Woolrich novel: each murder is a small film in itself, and each character, even those on-screen for just a line or two, leave their mark.