Il burattinaio

I'm a big fan of the Italian crime cycle of the 1970's... which came to a crashing halt in the early 80's in favor of gory splatter and post-nuke films. When the Italian film industry finally ran out of steam and succumbed to the American Theatrical system and home video in the late 80's, they pathetically tried to come back with the odd retread with extraordinarily reduced budgets (often filmed in Miami, The Philippines, or the Caribbean where filming is cheap). This is no exception, other than having a little more polished of a cast than say, HAMMERHEAD or MEAN TRICKS. However, it's still just an awful 80's Italian Miami action movie with no style and a cookie-cutter cop vs. mobster plot.

It's nice to see Fabio Testi as a cop like in THE BIG RACKET or VAI GORILLA, but he's completely unbelievable as an American one. He here is back in Miami after a leave in Tampa to stop a gang war among local drug lords. He's friends with an old mob boss (Ferzetti) and mortal enemies with Orso Maria Guerrini (THE BIG RACKET) who plays an up-and-comer who is trying to rub out the competition. Also, he's sleeping with a lawyer (the woman from ALIEN FROM THE DEEP) and having trouble with his ex wife and estranged daughter running around getting into trouble. Oh yeah, he carries a desert eagle and gets in a slow motion fist fight with Giovanni Cianfriglia.

While it's nice to see these familiar genre actors (along with Vasili Karis and Massimo Vanni) together again, it's too bad they're saddled with a rotten script, dull music, uninventive camera-work, and boring direction. There's some shootouts, but not plentiful enough nor over the top enough to really give any life to this film. It feels extremely low budget, like just a step above a student film. Very little in the way of squib work, car stunts, or explosions... and in an "action" film, that is completely unacceptable. Only worth viewing (once) as a curiosity because it's on a bargain bin dollar DVD.

This film is far more entertaining than I expected from a poverty-row Italian studio. You know how the late eighties/early nineties weren't the best time for Italian exploitation cinema, right? Well, First Action Hero manages to be action packed and never boring for a minute, and I'm not being sarcastic either!

Fabio Testi is Mark Ferrio, an exiled cop returning to Miami to investigate the killings of various crime bosses. To complicate things his father in law is a mob lord, his lover is a lawyer to another mob boss, and his daughter is right in the firing line. Ferrio is a shoot everything first, then never ask questions kind of cop and blasts his way through the streets of Miami trying to find out who is behind the killings. Not an easy job as some unknown crime boss is wiping out the competition (and, to keep things tidy, all the hit men he uses too).

Sure, it has all the trapping of the Miami based films of the time, but c'mon - it's Fabio Testi! He even gets to do his crying jag that he does in most films. Massimo Vanni even turns up briefly, and you know what happens when Massimo squares up to Fabio Testi (or Franco Nero)? I'll say one thing - he makes a great corpse.

I was all ready to give this film a seven or an eight but then came along the last twenty minutes, when the mobsters kidnap Ferrio's daughter and Testi turns Rambo is a cross warehouse/quarry mega massacre involving scores and scores of henchmen. Testi blasts away with his giant gun, blows up a car using a JCB (then stands shooting a guy for having the gall to still be alive, although the guy was on fire), uses a forklift to blow something else up, grabs loads of dynamite and blows loads of other stuff up, and still leaves time for a slow-motion middle age man mud fight! Cue slow motion tearful reunion and Testi wheeling his crippled partner (shot at a roller disco!) and you've got a classic right here.

Sure, it's low budget, and the bad guy's plan didn't make much sense, but when you've got a dockside gun battle, men in masks bursting in with machine guns at funerals, restaurants, and even a guy having surgery, and you've got a film that can stand way above anything you'd expect from this era in Italian film. Brilliant!