The Big Racket (1976)

Good concept, poorly executed.

A Masterpiece!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Two-fisted police detective Nico Palmieri (an excellent and charismatic performance by Fabio Testi) goes out of his way to take down a nefarious protection racket in Rome, Italy. When the ruthless scum who run the racket resort to such foul tactics as rape and murder, Nico throws the rulebook away and organizes a motley crew of fed-up victims to deal with the criminals on their own ferocious terms.Director Enzo G. Castellari, who also co-wrote the bitter script with Massimo De Rita and Arduino Maiuri, keeps the hard-hitting story moving along at a constant brisk pace, does a sturdy job of creating and sustaining a harsh, gritty, and utterly cynical tone, and stages the bracing'n'bravura action set pieces with his trademark rip-snorting skill and verve (the climax in a sprawling warehouse in particular delivers the rousing goods like nobody's tear 'em up business!). Vincent Gardenia excels as loyal and helpful informant Pepe. Orso Maria Guerrini likewise registers well as champion skeet shooter Rossetti. Moreover, this picture further benefits from a truly hateful rogues' gallery of cruel and despicable villains: Marcella Michelangeli as wicked bitch Marcy, Antonio Marsini as crooked lawyer Giuni, and the ever-slimy Joshua Sinclair as sleazy head honcho Rudy. The explosive moments of savage violence pack an extra potent and nasty punch, with oodles of super bloody quality squib work. Marcello Masciocchi's slick cinematography provides an impressive glossy look and makes exciting use of a hand-held camera. The funky-pulsating score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis hits the get-down groovy spot. A real bang-up stirring and satisfying winner.

One of Enzo Castellari's great '70s crime films. Fabio Testi is a police inspector bent on ridding the city of a gang of brutal extortionists only to be rebuffed continually by a corrupt legal system. Taking matters into his own hands, he recruits a number of the gang's victims to help exact revenge. An extremely violent (even for a Castellari) film that takes no prisoners. Test is terrific and the supporting cast is unusually strong: Vincent Gardenia; Renzo Palmer; Glauco Onorato; Orso Maria Guerrini. Castellari moves this film along so quickly it's breathtaking. There are a number of now legendary action sequences including an astounding and protracted shoot out in an abandoned factory that has to be seen to be believed. The great music score by Guido is a major asset and the beautiful cinematography is by Marcello Masciocchi.

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.

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