Racket

I have now seen quite a few of the Italian crime films made in the 70s. The Big Racket is easily among the better Poliziotteschi I've so far run across. The violent action is non-stop. The film rarely takes a break for the viewer to catch a breath. Fabio Testi stars as Inspector Nico Palmieri, a cop determined to put an end to the protection racket run by a group of local thugs. But the seemingly small time thugs are actually part of a larger group with the goal of spreading their reign of terror to a much larger scale. Nico enlists the aid of a handful of men who have been directly affected by the gang's activities to help him wipe out the entire group of gangsters. But does this small seemingly rag-tag band of misfits stand a chance against a much larger band of killers?

The Big Racket is gritty, violent, sadistic, and nothing is held back. Director Enzo Castellari has crafted some amazing action sequences. The shootouts at the train station and the final battle at the warehouse are some of the better scenes of this type I've seen. And the scene featuring Testi rolling down a hill inside a car is so well done and so realistic that I actually worried about Testi's health. The Big Racket also features a couple of rape scenes that can be difficult to watch, yet they add immensely to the overall feel of the film and supply realistic motivation for the vigilante actions to follow. These scenes are brutal and sadistic and show the depravity these thugs are capable of and why they must be eliminated.

Fabio Testi gives one of his better performances that I've seen in The Big Racket. Unlike The Heroin Busters, where I never bought into Testi's character, he is completely believable in this film. The rest of the main supporting cast is just as good. My favorite supporting performance comes from Orso Maria Guerrini, the marksman who goes mad for vengeance after watching his wife get raped and burned alive. Much of the cast is made up of stunt people who do an adequate job given their limited experiences in front of the camera.

Overall, if you're a Poliziotteschi fan or just a fan of American cop films from the 70s and have never seen an Italian crime film, The Big Racket is a definite must.

Italian, very familiar tale of cop who breaks the rules, gets suspended from the force, and then proceeds to dish out justice. In this case, Fabio Testi recruits the crime victims for his vigilante force. The film does not disappoint in the violence, rape and general mayhem. One gigantic question has to be what is Vincent Gardenia doing in this movie? He seems tragically out of his wise cracking element, and his considerable dark comedic talents are totally wasted. Expect plenty of ultra mindless violence, pretty decent stunts, brief full frontal nudity, and little character development. Although the action is substantial, some is redundant enough that things drag in places. Good of it's kind, and recommended. - MERK

Guido and Maurizio De Angelis Soundtrack!

Notable actors: Fabio Testi! Renzo Palmer! Orso Maria Guierrini! Romano Puppo! Sal Borghese! Joshua Sinclair! Massimo Vanni! Stefania Girolami! Enzo G Castellari!

Enzo Castellari stands out in an overcrowded market by showing everyone how it should be done - a full on Poliziotesschi, brutal and action packed, but also delivered with that pure Castellari style. This is the ideal starting place for anyone because if you don't like this, the genre probably isn't for you.

A new breed of criminal are moving in on Rome's protection rackets. Fearless, violent and ambitious, they go from shop to shop in the Piazza Navona threatening the patroni but unaware that they are being tailed by cop Nico (Fabio Testi) and his sidekick Sal Borghese. Their smartly dressed boss Rudy (Joshua Sinclair) does notice, however, and the result is Testi having his car rolled off a cliff. With him inside it. Castellari of course introduces Rudy with a serious of quirky edits set to a drum beat and films Nico from inside the car in slow motion while he rolls about in a blizzard of glass. This is in the first ten minutes.

Basically this new gang have the populace terrified and Nico is struggling to find someone brave enough to come forward as a witness. One restaurant owner does (Renzo Palmer) and the result is his daughter getting kidnapped and raped by the gang. Palmer then becomes insane and starts killing any criminals he can get his hands on. This of course lands Nico in trouble with his boss.

A gang this ruthless make a lot of enemies and eventually it's from this pool of bereaved husbands, vengeful fathers, double-crossed gangsters and petty criminals that Nico has to gather a small army to take on the gang, resulting in a gun battle that isn't so much a shoot out as full on warfare that decimates the populace of Rome and leaves it a smoking ruin littered with corpses and burning cars.

There's a lot to recommend this one. Fabio Testi's frustration as the gang constantly wipe out anyone who stands up to them is something to behold. Massimo Vanni as the cocky gangster and his rape-happy mates stand out as they beat shopowners, incite riots and kill without thinking. Vincent Gardenia adds a bit of humanity as the old pickpocket who helps Testi and gets his nephew killed in the process.

Enzo does his usual tricks, from slow motion to unusual camera angles to quick edits, and you've got the usual funky soundtrack by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. This is one of the best of 1976 and the genre, and although it's the only Eurocrime film Castellari made in 1976, he would also make Keoma the same year, and that's one of the best Spaghetti Westerns ever made. What a guy.

I must however point out that some moron who did the English dubbing decided to sanitise all the swearing, which marrs the film slightly. They all literally sound like Ned Flanders, talking about being in "deep diddly", or "that lousy basket" or "you mucker." Thankfully it doesn't ruin the film.

A script doesn't necessarily have to be realistic to be good. In my opinion, all it needs its to make sense, to be credible within itself. This movie has it all and its very fast paced. It is a very good attempt to expand the perspective of the action movies back then, and I consider it, along with "Perros Callejeros 1 and 2" the best european action movies of the 70s, the background for much of the filmmaking that we see today as "new", and a great spectacle. The enchant of these movies is that, even though some special effects are not credible at all (some of the shot wounds don't bleed at all), those that do required cars to be burnt and some stunts to expose themselves are better than those the new computarized hollywood movies have.It doesnt make you feel like you are watching cartoons. I admit that the beauty of movies is fantasy. But when i compare this movie to any action movie from hollywood, I come to the conclusion that fantasy doesn't necessarily have to please anybodies wishes nor to be custom made for a certain public, but to show different prespectives than those that public has.

the only problem...Real hard to find

Along with Fernando DiLeo and Sergio Martino, Enzo Castellari is one of the Italian genre directors whose work has really been rehabilitated lately thanks to people like Quentin Tarantino. And, however, you feel personally about QT, it's hard to fault his tastes. Castellari, whose father (Marino Girolami) and uncle (Romolo Guerreri) were also respected Italian directors, made many films in many genres, including Westerns ("Any Gun Can Play"),gialli ("The Cold Eyes of Fear"), and horror flicks("Sensitiva"). His two most famous films were "The Last Shark", which never shown in the US because of an injunction brought by the makers of "Jaws", and "Inglorious Bastards", which Tarantino recently (and very loosely) remade. This movie is not one of his more famous, but it is definitely one of Castellari's best.

Fabio Testi plays a cop who is taking on a big, mafia-connected protection racket that is shaking down businesses all over Italy, and using disgruntled left-wing university students, including a tough female ( ) to do it. Frustrated by the limitations of the law, Testi eventually puts together a gang of victims of the racket including Vincent Gardenia, a small-time crook who lost his nephew to the gang, an Olympic champion skeet shooter who lost his wife, and perhaps most touching, a restaurant owner who went crazy after the gang raped his young daughter and she killed herself. Together they plan an improbable, but not entirely unbelievable, campaign to take down the entire racket.

This movie has a lot of the elements of a police thriller, but also of a rape-revenge/"Deathwish"-type movie. I wouldn't really call it "fascist" though because it really doesn't glorify violence (not too many people are left alive by the end of this). The protagonists, especially Testi's character, are flawed, three-dimensional, and vulnerable rather than being just a heroic super-cop types. And this has downbeat, noirish elements like some of the early American police thrillers of that period (i.e. "Dirty Harry", "The French Connection", "Deathwish"), but that were definitely lost by the happy-fascist Reagan era. These aren't self-righteous, fascist crime fighters, but decent people driven to extremes in a violent, decaying society. Of course, as an action movie this is still very entertaining, but the realistic violence and three-dimensional characters always keeps it from simply degenerating into another cop-worshipping cartoon. Recommended.