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Italy
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1976
Directed
by Enzo G. Castellari
Starring
Fabio Testi
Vincent Gardenia
Renzo Palmer
Color |
106 Minutes |
Not Rated
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC)
Blue Underground
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Railyard
Massacre
Windows Media - 2.6 MB
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10
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Guest
Review by Rod
Barnett |
In
a small Italian town an organized group of criminals is systematically
coercing every business owner to pay protection money or suffer
the consequences. Their methods are extremely violent —
threats of arson and vandalism are quickly made concrete if
any resistance is offered. Enter Nico Palmieri (The
Heroin Busters' Fabio Testi), a police inspector assigned
to stop the hoodlums' extortion racket. Palmieri takes his job
very seriously, and after an attack on him that puts him in
the hospital his desire to stop these punks goes up a few notches.
He first tries to get some of the terrorized store owners to
press charges but can only get one restaurateur (Renzo Palmer)
to come forward. In response to the man's bravery the gang kidnaps
and rapes his teenage daughter, resulting in her death. Calling
in a favor from career thief Pepe (Vincent Gardenia), Nico uses
him for information, getting a tip that leads to a disastrous
ambush in which many more cops than criminals get killed. The
gang then sets up Pepe on his next robbery, causing the thief
to be arrested and his young nephew/partner to be beaten to
death by an angry mob of citizens.
This highly public debacle brings Nico's
deal with Pepe to the attention of the Police Commissioner,
and having been previously removed from the case he's now fired.
Knowing that if the leaders of the criminal organization are
not discovered and taken out the racket will roll over the hamstrung
police department, Nico moves to work completely outside the
law. He recruits a team of people with a desire to exact vengeance
on the gang, arms them and gets a vital piece of information
about a meeting of the top bosses. Among his hit team is the
now slightly mad restaurateur Luigi; champion skeet shooter
Giovanni (Orso Maria Guerrini), whose wife was murdered after
her husband helped the cops; a former mob hit man (Romano Puppo)
willing to participate for his freedom from prison and a passport;
and Pepe, who's hoping to purge his guilt over his nephew.
The
Big Racket is a fantastic
crime/action film with a great story, solid performances and
several very exciting gun battles. Over the past few years director
Enzo G. Castellari has slowly become one of my favorite Italian
cult filmmakers. He's worked in nearly every genre I hold dear,
swinging from the western to thrillers to post-apocalyptic Mad
Max rip-offs without missing a beat. Here he starts the
action off in high gear and then manages to ramp things up with
only the briefest of pauses along the way for strategy. The
story moves smoothly from point to point with little wasted
effort and consistently shows a great deal of style. Even if
by 1976 the (over) use of slow motion in action scenes was getting
to be old hat, Castellari employs the technique brilliantly.
It never feels forced or gratuitous but enhances the tension
and shock as bullets strike flesh or glass flies. The best use
of slo-mo here has to be the amazing scene in which we watch
as Testi is tumbled down a hillside in a car. My jaw dropped
open as I realized that those glass fragments and bits of debris
flying around the car were real. It's moments like this one
that keep the audience off balance. The movie throws in unexpected
twists that smartly draw us in and keep us guessing. Having
civilian marksman Giovanni impulsively join the action during
the failed police ambush puts a further edge on the proceedings.
Seeing this regular guy do the right thing, pay a horrible price
and become a vengeful outlaw is well played with Guerrini more
than capable in the role. Even the score by Guido and Maurizio
De Angelis is amazing sounding, as if the best ’70s era hard
rock jam band you never heard of recorded it.
Truly this is a great
find for fans of both Euro-Cult and flat-out action movie fans
but I do have to offer one caveat. This DVD only presents the
film with its English dub track which, while serviceable, is
not the perfect way to see the movie. Unlike the majority of
European films produced for export at the time, The
Big Racket was not shot with the actors speaking English,
but Italian. Since the story takes place in Italy this seems
a natural choice — they're not trying to pretend this is the
U.S. for once. But this throws the dubbing off in a way that
occasionally distracted me. This alone wouldn't have been too
bad, but the English dub has a serious flaw... The language
seems to have been sanitized for our protection. There are nearly
no profanities above the level of "damn" or "hell",
and where stronger terms would be obvious bad substitutes have
been used instead. This occasionally leads to some pretty dumb
moments that make the events onscreen unintentionally comic.
How many frustrated, enraged grown men use the word "diddly"
instead of "shit"? Or would refer to a jammed weapon
in the heat of a deadly battle as a "son of a gun"?
There are a few times when this dodging of strong language
is strangely effective though, such as when the extortion gang
is threatening to sexually assault Luigi's daughter. Somehow
the euphemisms make their threats more sinister as our imaginations
fill in what is being implied. But I still think that the best
way to see this movie would be with the Italian soundtrack and
subtitles. With Blue Underground's record of including sometimes
rare alternate language tracks I would have expected that option
here.
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every other front I can call this release a major success. BU
presents the film in a gorgeous blemish-free print letterboxed
at 1.85:1 and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. The film is sharp
and colorful, bringing a great amount of detail to the fore, especially
in the many slow motion shots. While I've already mentioned the
problem I have with the English audio track I'm happy to report
that the mono sound is well presented and pretty robust. There
are two extras on the DVD, with the theatrical trailer being the
least and a solid commentary track adding real value for fans.
Enzo Castellari joins moderator David Gregory for an entertaining
trip through The Big Racket that
smartly also addresses several other of the director's movies.
Castellari is gregarious and informative, talking about everything
from why he played a craven store owner in the film to how he
pulled off one of the movie's most fantastic visual moments. His
Sam Raimi story alone was worth listening to the whole track.
I'd also like to compliment the folks at BU for using big chunks
of the De Angelis score on the menu pages and for letting the
final music cue play out over a black screen after the credit
crawl ends. Nice touch and much appreciated. 4/30/06 |
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