Yul Brynner has screen charisma & extreme coolness even in a terrible movie. Death Rage (aka Anger in His Eyes, 1976) is a terrible gangster thriller about strong silent professional killer Peter Marciani (Brynner), the hitman with a heart of gold.

Although he has wearied of a killer's way of life & made every effort to retire, one last commission is impossible to turn down, as the man the New York mob wants dead is the same man who killed Peter's brother.

The rival mob is in Naples. One problem with the film is that in spite of an international background cast, it never has a feeling of being the international gangster story it pretends to be, as even the Naples police commissar (Martin Balsam) has a Bronx accent.

In Naples, a small-time flimflam artist who works the race track & shoots horses' rumps with an air rifle to effect racing outcomes starts following Peter around, trying to be his assistant & disciple for the higher job of professional assassin. Peter educates the kid in the ways of a killer's world while at the same time trying to discourage him from an unfulfilling lifestye.

The bulk of the tale consists of ordinary stuff like car chases inclusive of crashing through a fruit stand, a bit of sex between Brynner & his leading lady (Barbara Bouchet), standard stunt man gags like rolling down staircases or flipping off a high point to a low point, cornpone shoot-outs, & intimations of criminal conspiracies too trival to justify any of it.

There's a tragic climax followed by a twist ending, with an attempt at both irony & emotional content. But with poor cinematography, grating soundtrack, & a lousy script reiliant on cliche, Death Rage amounts to a pisspoor film overall.

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