Trailer
Plot summary
Jeff Heston works as a professional assassin. He is on holiday in the Virgin Islands with Vanessa, his lover, when thugs led by Jerry Coogan, a former associate of Jeff's, set upon the couple. Jeff is shot and abandoned; Vanessa appears to leave with Coogan. Jailed over the shooting, Jeff receives a visit from Steve, a lawyer acting for the crime boss Al Weber, Jeff's one-time employer. Jeff will not bring Vanessa into it as a witness who might clear him, even though that keeps him inside longer. Once out, he heads for New Orleans, where men in Weber's pay approach him about returning to the fold. Jeff says he is retired and refuses. He then asks his old friend Killain, a hitman, to help him locate Coogan.
Cast
- Peter Daneas Television Host
- Beryl Salvatoreas Debutante
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Violent City (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After Jon Voight and Sharon Tate were considered for Jeff and Vanessa, Sollima and producer Arrigo Colombo settled on Tony Musante and Florinda Bolkan; Charles Bronson then accepted the role of Jeff only if his wife Jill Ireland was cast as Vanessa.
- Director Sergio Sollima was unenthusiastic about the original treatment for Violent City, calling it a love story with nothing extraordinary, so he rewrote the screenplay with filmmaker Lina Wertmüller and added a non-linear flashback structure absent from the draft.
- The film's finale was shot in three locations, but Ennio Morricone composed a score for the sequence that Sollima chose to drop, playing the scene without music or sound effects except Jeff's shots hitting the elevator glass.
- Carlo Rambaldi contributed some uncredited special effects to this film, creating an animatronic black widow spider for the jail cell sequence.
- The opening car chase in Saint Thomas was performed by Rémy Julienne; when Bronson asked if it was influenced by Bullitt, the director claimed he was instead reprising a chase he created for his earlier film Agent 3S3: Massacre in the Sun.
- Sollima called New Orleans a "magical city" and chose locations reflecting its various cultures, including a neighborhood damaged by a race riot that the production office was hesitant to film in.
