Pizza Connection (1985)

Mario Vialone, a Mafia hitman who runs a pizzeria in New York as a front, is visited by Ognibene, a shady figure connected to the “organization” of boss Jimmy Galento, for whom he acts as an intermediary. Ognibene assigns Mario to plan an attack in Palermo on Santalucia, the Republic’s chief prosecutor, who has enough evidence to stop the drug trade between Italy and America. After eliminating Carmelo Impellitteri, a potential “rival” at a red-light club, Mario leaves for Palermo, where his family lives and welcomes him back after many years. There he sees his younger brother Michele again, now grown up and working as an assistant to a fishmonger. But when the fishmonger is murdered for failing to pay protection money, Michele loses his job because he tried to report the killer, having seen his face clearly. The young man is also chaste in his attraction to Cecilia Smedile, a young girl who shops from him and returns his feelings through their mutual confidences. Taking advantage of his brother’s vulnerable situation, Mario uses it to recruit him for the attack, since he needs men he can thoroughly trust. First he has Michele fire a few pistol shots “for fun”; then he reveals what he really does in the States and asks for his help. But Michele, disgusted and having guessed his brother’s intentions, refuses and goes to Cecilia’s home. There he discovers to his horror that the girl is being forced into prostitution by her mother, who is in turn being blackmailed by Vincenzo, her drug dealer and live-in partner, who supplies her with drugs for her addicted son. Michele is then beaten by the woman’s partner and Momo, one of his associates, and ends up in jail. He is released with Mario’s help, and later receives a phone call from the Smediles: they are willing to hand Cecilia over to him in exchange for the enormous sum of twenty million. With no honest way to earn that much money in so little time, Michele has to accept Mario’s terms. He asks Mario for a loan, and Mario promises to give him his share of the money if he takes part in the attack. After smashing the window of a jewelry store as a test of the Kalashnikovs, Michele is forced to kill Mancuso, Santalucia’s head of security. But at the last moment he cannot bring himself to do it, and Mario carries out the killing himself, giving up on Michele’s help. The attack on the police officer puts the Prosecutor on alert. For some time he has been living like a prisoner in his own home, guarded day and night as if he were the real criminal. Meanwhile, Commissioner Astarita, who until then had been investigating alone and had even tried a sort of collaboration with the Auricchios, a family belonging to the losing Mafia faction, receives an anonymous call from Michele. Desperate, Michele tells him about the planned attack on the Prosecutor and warns him to take the necessary precautions. But the corrupt official Romanò, a mole who intercepts the call, has the killers murder the commissioner before he can reveal what he knows. The attack therefore takes place the next morning, and succeeds: as the Prosecutor and his escort are heading to the Palace of Justice, Mario and his henchmen massacre them with bazookas. Michele’s phone call, however, has provoked the anger of the city’s Mafia families, who launch a manhunt. Nicola Schirò, Mario’s subordinate and the hitman who murdered the fishmonger where Michele worked, recognizes Michele’s voice and informs Ognibene and Mario. The three set off to find the young man, but Mario sends them to the isolated hamlet of Piana degli Albanesi. Once there, he first cold-bloodedly kills Nicola and then, after a final argument with Ognibene, gets rid of him too, shooting him in the back: his love for his family and his determination to protect them have proved stronger than everything else. At the same time, Michele finds out where Cecilia is and takes her away from her tormentors despite their threats. Discovering that Mario had always known where Cecilia was being hidden and had kept it secret from him fills Michele with an unforgivable resentment, and he breaks off all ties with his brother. Mario then sets off to return to his pizzeria in New York, hoping to get away with everything and that no one will suspect him. He is driven by attorney Masseria, now the undisputed boss of the Sicilian Mafia, who pretends to accept his explanations and lets him leave apparently without consequence. But Mario knows he cannot escape his fate. Once he is back in America, he expects the Mafia’s revenge at any moment, and realizes his time has come when two unfamiliar customers enter the pizzeria while a third waits outside, sitting on the hood of a car, ready to make a getaway. Aware that the end is near, he makes one last gesture and calls home to make peace with Michele, but he manages to exchange only a few words with his brother before the two hitmen gun him down.