Lucky Luciano (Blu-ray)

Director Francesco Rosi and star Gian Maria Volontè (Illustrious Corpses, The Mattei Affair, Christ Stopped at Eboli) paint a brilliant, epic portrait of notorious Mafia boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano. In 1946, after serving time for the murder of his colleagues in crime, Luciano was pardoned and sent back to his homeland of Sicilia. Rather than changing his life around, it was here that he became one of the most powerful leaders of crime the world has ever known. Shot in docudrama style by cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis (Death in Venice), Lucky Luciano is a riveting “film-dossier” on the thin line between legal and illegal powers. Quietly menacing in the title role, Volontè heads a cast featuring Rod Steiger (A Fistful of Dynamite), Edmond O’Brien (The Hitch-Hiker), Vincent Gardenia (The Front Page), Charles Cioffi (Klute), Larry Gates (In the Heat of the Night) and Luciano’s real-life nemesis, narcotics agent Charles Siragusa, as himself.