Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Lucky Luciano Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 7, 2021

Francesco Rosi's "Lucky Luciano" (1973) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The only bonus feature on the disc is an exclusive new audio commentary recorded by author and critic Simon Abrams. In English and Italian, with optional English subtitles where necessary. Region-A "locked".

If you approach Francesco Rosi’s film expecting that it would offer a richly detailed profile of Lucky Luciano, it is practically guaranteed that your experience with it will be underwhelming. The film focuses only on the notorious gangster’s Italian period and barely touches on the various key developments that reshaped America’s underworld after his extradition. The film’s other unfortunate weakness is its insistence on bringing in politics that are channeled from a very particular angle. While this isn’t too surprising given the era from which it emerged, it irreversibly damages its integrity.

The narrative is broken into multiple uneven chapters which document Luciano’s (Gian Maria Volonte) activities in Italy until his death at the airport in Naples. After he is seen departing New York City, Luciano lands in his native county and immediately begins expanding old relationships with local crime bosses. His main ambition becomes the reorganization of the drug trafficking business and eventual takeover of the power entity that will became known as the National Crime Syndicate. The famous gathering of Italian and American crime bosses at Hotel Delle Palme in Palermo is one of the film’s highlights, but it only rehashes basic information that has been widely available. (The gathering took place in 1957 and legitimized Palermo as a crucial hub for the drug trafficking business between Europe and North America. However, the equally consequential meeting that took place a month later in the Appalachian Mountains in New York as a result of this gathering is barely addressed. It is believed that a series of events after it effectively reshaped the balance of power between the big crime families in America). In the remaining chapters, Luciano is seen meeting and negotiating with other ambitious crime figures, like Gene Giannini (Rod Steiger), and facing mounting pressure from Italian and American authorities to acknowledge his involvement in a wide range of criminal activities, but this is largely instantly forgettable material that emphasizes transparent drama in a very familiar fashion.

Rosi’s best films are shot a lot like semi-documentaries but with a very particular feel about location and time. It is why even very big historic events that are chronicled in them usually appear like pieces of a unique cinematic mosaic.

Lucky Luciano appears to have been conceived with an intent to replicate the exact same concept, but the end result is quite unconvincing. There are a few reasons why it is so, but the most important one is Rosi’s inability to convince that his comprehension of Luciano’s persona and legacy is good enough to properly reconstruct them in a film. For example, Luciano’s relationship with Meyer Lansky is barely even mentioned, which is unfortunate to say the least because it is a well-known fact that it was crucial for the evolution of the National Crime Syndicate. Also, while living in Italy Luciano used intermediaries to reset his interests in America with lasting consequences that many believe indirectly and directly impacted big political developments, but the practice is essentially ignored. (The ripple effects from Luciano’s activities in Cuba, for instance, were felt before and long after the Cuban missile crisis ended).

Volonte should not have been cast to play Luciano as well. This notoriously temperamental actor is practically unrecognizable because he is required to become an oddly polished camera-happy middle-aged man who most of the time looks like a government bureaucrat who is secretly dreaming of having a different career. It is such a disappointing performance that after the end credits roll it is fairly easy to speculate that during the production process Volonte and Rosi were quite simply not on the same page.

Lucky Luciano Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Lucky Luciano arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The release is sourced from a 4K master that was prepared after the film was restored in 4K under the supervision of director Francesco Rosi in 2013. All restoration work was carried out at L'immagine Ritrovata.

The end result is as bad as the 4K 'restoration' of The Damned that was just introduced by the folks at Criterion. In addition to the awful color-scheme, the entire film now has a very distracting digital appearance. In many darker areas the native dynamic range of the visuals has either partially or completely collapsed. Predictably, native nuances are either severely compromised or simply lost. In some darker areas the damage is so profound that filmic depth has been eliminated (you can see an example in screencapture #16). In daylight footage, or other footage with proper lighting, highlights are destabilized as well. Delineation and depth range from mediocre to poor, with only a few occasional examples of what the end result should have been if the restoration had been handled properly. Image stability is excellent. All visuals look spotless as well. My score is 1.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

*I have included the official restoration credits -- see screentaptures -- which reveal that Rosi approved the grading job in order to "restore the original quality of the work done by cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis." It is painfully obvious that the restoration fails to accomplish this goal. At the time when Rosi apparently endorsed the work, he was 91. He passed away in 2015.

Lucky Luciano Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (with portions of Italian). Optional English subtitles can be used where necessary.

Even though the audio has been fully restored, it is actually quite difficult to judge its quality. It is because the original soundtrack features narration as well as exchanges in multiple languages that are not carefully balanced. Also, there is some overdubbing that was completed after various sequences were shot. My feeling is that the restored audio is as best as it can be, but you should expect to hear some small yet notable dynamic and even clarity fluctuations. There are no pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or distortions to report in our review.

Lucky Luciano Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - exclusive new audio commentary recorded by critic and author Simon Abrams.

Lucky Luciano Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I don't think that Francesco Rosi was the right director to shoot an illuminating film about the life and legacy of Lucky Luciano. Or was this actually the original intent behind Rosi's film? I could not tell, because there are such massive gaps in its reconstruction of the famous crime boss' profile that it seems like Rosi was trying to do a different type of film. Also, when the final credits rolled, I was left with the impression that Rosi and the great actor Gian Maria Volonte were likely not on the same page because the scripted transformation and the manner in which the latter is used are equally unconvincing. Kino Lorber's release is sourced from a problematic 4K master that was prepared at L'immagine Ritrovata. AVOID.