Verdict
Summary
A tight thriller with a simple plot and minimal characters and locations, Vertigo for a Killer is a solid entry in the “hitman” genre, and it had me on its side until the last few moments when it leaves the viewer with a bummer of an ending. The performances – particularly by Bozzuffi, who was later in The French Connection – are all perfectly calibrated, and the direction by Jean-Pierre Desagnat never wastes a second. Like a lean steak without the frills, this is a pretty good cinematic bit of protein.
Plot:
An assassin is hunted by his employers when he refuses to kill a friend.
Review:
Given a job to assassinate a fellow assassin, Marc (Marcel Bozzuffi) flubs it up on purpose, much to the ire of his employers, who realize very quickly that the mark was a friend of his. When his bosses put a mark on his head for botching his job, Marc goes on the run in Italy, desperate to break free, willing to take any plane to any destination, but with assassins everywhere hunting for him, he finds dead ends in every direction. As fate would have it, a wealthy, attractive woman named Sylvie (Sylva Koscina) sees an opportunity to save his hide when he desperately needs a way out of the airport, and she gives him a ride to her place under the auspices of a quick fling (or she makes him think that, anyway), and so he thinks he’s gotten lucky, but he’s no fool: Always with his guard up and his gun ready, Marc never believes for one second that he’s safe. As it turns out, Sylvie has another man hiding in her house, and they have a plan to frame the hitman for a murder, but first they have to kill him so that they can frame him, but Marc is a professional and realizes just in time that he’s been trapped and set up for murder.
A tight thriller with a simple plot and minimal characters and locations, Vertigo for a Killer is a solid entry in the “hitman” genre, and it had me on its side until the last few moments when it leaves the viewer with a bummer of an ending. The performances – particularly by Bozzuffi, who was later in The French Connection – are all perfectly calibrated, and the direction by Jean-Pierre Desagnat never wastes a second. Like a lean steak without the frills, this is a pretty good cinematic bit of protein.
Kino Lorber brings Vertigo for a Killer to Blu-ray in a new HD master from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, and it comes with a new audio commentary nu film historians.
