Nico con la escuadra antimafia

"Squadro Antimafia" is the fourth entry in a series of no less than eleven (!) comedy/crime crossbreed movies, written & directed by Bruno Corbucci and starring Tomas Millian as the rebellious and unorthodox cop Nick Giraldi. The films are relatively easy to trace thanks to a specific pattern in the titles. The first five are named "Squadra Anti" + a kind of criminal activity. "Anti-Kidnap Squad", "Anti-Theft Squad", "Anti-Swindle Squad", etc. The last five movie titles all start with "Delitto", so we have "Crime on the Highway", "Crime at the Chinese Restaurant", etc. Only the sixth film has a unique title and refers to a murder plot.

As I feared, the quality and entertainment level of the sequels is rapidly decreasing. The first three were fun & refreshing, but the fourth one is dull & uninspired, and I honestly don't know if I'll make it until the end of the franchise this way. The surprise effect of Milian's vulgar and foul-mouthed semi-cop/semi-thug character has vanished entirely, the gags are derivative and lame, and there practically isn't any action. During a riot in an Italian prison, a gangster dressed as a police officer shoots and kills an important witness of an upcoming mafia trial. Giraldi is put on the case, and his search leads him to New York and Las Vegas (where remarkably many people speak Italian) and where he must infiltrate in the family of mobster Don Gerolamo Giarri. The latter is depicted by the great and legendary Eli Wallach, who clearly didn't read the script in advance.

Apart from a handful of moments providing modest chuckles, like Milian smearing a greasy pizza in the face of the Don's henchman or the running gag of Milian running from the Don's unattractive spinster-daughter, "Squadro Antimafia" is a terribly dull and forgettable effort.

I didn't much like this film when I first saw it ten or twelve years ago, but I was probably expecting a serious, fast-paced, violent Italian crime film as many of Tomas Milian's mid-70s films were. However this one emphasizes the comedy at least as much as the action, although it is still a successful package and the comedy/crime mixture works well. I haven't see all the later films (which ran well into the 1980's) with Milian as unconventional police inspector Nico Giraldi, but the one after this THE GANG THAT SOLD America, which also features a lot of US location shooting, does not work that well in my opinion and is full of dated pop culture references and unfunny humor. The first scene of LITTLE ITALY--as a dirty old man is looking through binoculars at a lady undressing...while his apartment is completely stripped clean by robbers only a few feet away from him!--sets the tone for the film. The plot, such as it is, takes Milian to New York and eventually to Las Vegas (and eventually to the gas chamber in Nevada in an outrageous climax!), and there's lots of great location footage of him walking along the old Vegas strip circa 1978. Eli Wallach appears (though his voice doesn't!) as a mafia don, in a role that didn't require much of this fine actor, but he plays comedy well and is good in the scenes involving his underlings, his red-haired wallflower oversexed daughter, and Milian (the scene in the Italian restaurant where Milian throws a pizza in the face of one of Wallach's underlings is classic!). Bombolo, who appears in a number of these later Nico Giraldi films, is a fine comic foil for Milian, and they have a good chemistry. I've yet to see the 1980's entries in this series (any kind soul out there with extra copies?), but in LITTLE ITALY the series still has some life in it, and Bruno Corbucci makes the mix of lowbrow Italian comedy and Italian police action work well. Not a classic, and action-oriented fans will be let down, but Milian fans will enjoy it. It would be nice to see the English-dubbed versions of all these films be released in a regular schedule at under ten dollars each on DVD and letter-boxed, but I won't stay awake at night waiting for that to happen any time soon...