Street People (1976)

Thanks for the memories!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Thin plot about some Italian mobsters...watch this movie for the spectacular car chases through Sausalito and San Francisco in the mid 70's when it was still pretty, open and not the tourist trap it is now. THESE WERE REAL STUNTS people not the garbage computer generated pablum they pass off to millennials in current movies. Movies now are like cartoons. This was real action and believable not the over the top tripe they make now geared towards horny 14 year olds.

This strangely colorless film blends elements from several different genres -- Mafia pictures, drug deal features, your basic shoot 'em up actionfest, and a standard car chase romp, all tied together with a mismatched buddy crime-fighting duo -- into a bland mishmash that crucially fails to develop a flavorful distinction which could have allowed all the disparate bits and pieces to jell into a pleasingly coherent and enjoyable whole. Moreover, the unmistakably British Roger Moore is horribly miscast as a partly Italian lawyer who's assigned by a powerful mob capo to nail the three brutal thugs who smuggled a million dollars worth of smack into the country by hiding the dope inside a large wooden cross. Moore, assisted by jocular grand prix professional race car driver Stacy Keach (who gives a solid, lively performance that's much better than the insipid material deserves), pounds the pavement for the dirtbags and uncovers a series of double and triple crosses which lead to a shocking revelation of a grim secret stemming from Moore's shadowy past. Maurizio Lucidi's merely adequate direction remains resolutely workmanlike from start to finish, putting too much emphasis on dull chitchat during the opening and middle of the movie. In addition, the poky, erratic pace and a curious sense of unfortunate restraint prevents this picture from acquiring both the baroque style and trashy vitality it needs to seriously cook. However, things do finally come to life in the reasonably sound and exciting last half hour, with a rousing car chase and a few bloody shoot-outs enlivening the general tedium. Still, the humdrum script that was co-written by noted screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (who also penned "Shaft" and "The French Connection") and future "Grease" director Randal Kleiser, sticks too closely to run-of-the-mill predictable and unsurprising crime thriller conventions, thereby making this mediocre outing a strictly middling and passable time-killer at best.

This is really a movie which has lost its interest by the time. The actors just seem to drive around like in a mediocre American police-serial. When people are shot, it is by a killer who appears and disappears and is everywhere. When there is a pursuit on the road, by accident three big trucks try to drive Stacey Keach from the road. I prefer Mannix or Kojak. The mafia is typical but described without any details or exactitude. The story has no point and nobody could believe it. Roger Moore is not only a lawyer, he must be also something as an SAS-agent capable of killing any professional killer. Who believes that?

This film is one of the hardest Roger Moore films to track down, other than the almost forgotten Sunday Lovers. The version I saw was entitled The Executors and ran for 100 minutes, and as far as I'm aware it is the most complete edition of the film in circulation. Other editions include Sicilian Cross, Gli Esecutori and Street People. Under any title it is not a good film..... in fact, it is one of the worst examples of Italian profiteering movie making.The film is similar to The French Connection. It deals with drug peddlars in San Francisco. In order to smuggle their latest consignment in the US, they have used a wooden crucifix sent as a gift to the Californian fishermen from the island of Sicily. This enrages the local godfather, who sends his nephew Moore to catch the culprits. Moore enlists the aid of his hard-driving buddy Stacy Keach and eventually tracks down the villains, but the truth affects him more personally and emotively than he could have foreseen.The film is full of under developed moments. There's a great opportunity for a classic car chase, but the sequence is badly editted and makes little sense. The final showdown could have packed a real wallop, but it fizzles out without generating anything of note. The best scene involves Keach wrecking a car, but even then it isn't a great scene... merely a mediocre scene in a movie full of bad scenes.Moore gives an OK performance and Keach is pretty good in his usual casual way. The foreign actors are embarrassingly dubbed and look foolish as a result. All in all, this film is for Roger Moore completists only,as anybody else will certainly find it a hard slog.