Tomb

The really great thing about Street Law (1974) is that the hero might just be the most inept vigilante ever put on film. I don't mean that he's a bumbling Clouseau-esque buffoon; I just mean that he seems realistically short-sighted and unprepared compared to the other swaggering heroes that blight vigilante cinema. You know the type I'm talking about — gruff, unfeeling vengeance machines who can mow down a roomful of baddies without reloading or breaking a sweat. Heck, in Invasion U.S.A. (1985), Chuck Norris doesn't even do any investigating; he just appears out of thin air whenever anybody commits a crime, then shoots them to pieces. By contrast, Street Law is like watching your kindly uncle Morty trying to take down John Dillinger.

Intense, blue-eyed actor Franco Nero (Django, 1966) gives a heartfelt performance as the put-upon hero, Carlo. He genuinely looks like he's crapping his pants with fear every time a criminal pushes him around, which is most of the time. Carlo's an engineer, just an average guy with no idea how to neutralize a criminal organization. So why is he risking his neck to take down the four gangsters who victimized him? Because the attack has left him crippled with fear and he feels that the only way to conquer his fear is to fight back. He's not after money or vengeance; he's just trying to regain a sense of security and self-confidence.

The box describes the attack on Carlo as “a mugging,” which isn't strictly true. What happens is that a four-man team of armed thugs robs a bank just as Carlo is making a large deposit. After a few seconds of indecision, Carlo tries to grab his money back from the teller's window amidst the confusion, but the robbers notice and reward him with a kick in the ribs. When the alarm goes off, the thieves grab Carlo as a hostage, bundle him into a car, pull off their balaclavas so that Carlo can get a good look at their faces (an odd thing to do, but I suppose we wouldn't have a movie otherwise), then pistol-whip him into submission.

Later on, Carlo tries to identify his attackers from the database of mugshots at the police station, but the attackers don't seem to be in the database, which seems suspicious to the detective in charge. (It seems suspicious to me, too. These guys just pulled off a daring daylight robbery and then got chased halfway across Rome while firing machine guns at the police. I kinda assumed at least one of these guys would already have a criminal record.)

Fed up with apparent police indifference, Carlo decides to hunt the gang down himself and slaps his girlfriend Barbara Bach (Mrs. Ringo Starr) for suggesting that maybe he shouldn't. Barbara responds in typical fashion for a slapped girlfriend in an Italian crime drama — she glares at him angrily before turning and jogging away. Their relationship is unaffected. Clearly, she was just testing him to make sure he was serious about this vigilante stuff; after accepting the slap she can rest easy in the knowledge that she's dating a real man. (Yeeesh, 1970s crime films, eh?)

With absolutely no idea how to proceed, Carlo begins his search by walking into seedy bars and asking vague questions of every skeevy character he can find. He gets chased out of bars a lot. Finally, he starts following a minor criminal around, takes snapshots of him pulling a heist and blackmails the guy into buying some guns for him. The blackmailed criminal turns out to be a sort-of-nice guy named Tommy (Giancarlo Prete), who actually becomes Carlo's sidekick. And boy, does he need one. Over the course of the film, Carlo makes dozens of tragic errors, mostly the kind of thing that movie heroes have been getting away with for years, but which would get them killed in real life. We wind up genuinely rooting for this guy because he seems so human. When Carlo attempts to defend himself against three hardened criminals, it's not so much a fight as a beating, with Carlo barely getting any hits in at all before getting knocked unconscious.

Since Carlo never makes the clichéd transition from regular guy to super ass-kicker, the final confrontation with the gang is terrifying. Running for his life in a huge darkened warehouse, he's startled when all the lights suddenly snap on, leaving him trapped without cover in a vast empty building, while the armed gangsters taunt him from the shadows and take pot shots.

Special mention must be made of the stunts in this movie. Director Enzo G. Castellari (of the original Inglorious Bastards from 1978 fame) puts his brave stunt performers though scenarios that look virtually unsurvivable. Jaded audiences accustomed to CGI trickery might make it 60 seconds into one of Street Law's truly apocalyptic car chases before suddenly realizing, “Hang on; this is real! Somebody is actually driving that car! Are they nuts?”

This is an entertaining and fast-paced crime thriller weakened by some bad music and a few overly melodramatic moments, but strengthened by Franco Nero's fallible protagonist and some truly nail-biting scenes. Blue Underground's uncut, widescreen DVD version of Street Law runs over 20 minutes longer than the 77 minute VHS version I'm familiar with and is probably a bit more violent and/or coherent. Check it out.