Runtime:
90 minutes
Directed
by: Umberto Lenzi
Starring:
Tomas Milian, Joseph Cotten, Maria Fiore, Mario Piave, Femi Benussi
From:
Dania Cinematografica
On
this day of chaos and sad world news, I figured I would go for some
escapist entertainment and watch another poliziotteschi film, this
time one that isn't too difficult to find on YouTube, rather than the
ones I've seen as of late that I found on a mysterious site where
there's an amazing number of obscure uploads. I'll admit, a big
reason why I picked it out was that I recognized some of the names in
the cast (Italian actors Milian and Benussi, along with Cotten, who
yes once appeared in movies like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent
Ambersons and his career ended up here, delivering a surprisingly
more wooden than Pinocchio; it wasn't the dubbing either, as all of
his part was in English) and the fact that Tomas plays a character
named... RAMBO. Yes. Obviously it was taken from the David Morrell novel
First Blood shortly after it came out, which was years before Sly
Stallone first played John Rambo.
To
steal the plot from the IMDb: “A
biker's brother is killed while investigating the kidnapping of a
young boy, the byproduct of a war between two crime families. The
biker vows to get revenge by finding the kidnapped boy and destroying
the two families.”
Yeah,
the plot seems similar to Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which was also adapted
into A Fistful of Dollars. That sounded good to me and turns out, I
did enjoy it, even more than I was expecting.There was what you'd
expect from the genre, meaning shootouts, a badass hero (and Rambo
did live up to the name, delivering many great moments), action on a
bike (in this case a motorcycle that Rambo rides, while aways wearing
a red cap and the old-style of motorcycle goggles), fistfights (there
is a great one in a pool hall), a real funky 70's-riffic score and yeah, some sleaze. You see a woman
get beat up, which yeah was uncomfortable. There was also a forced OD
of cocaine, which is always good for laughs...
In
short, I am glad this is easy to find online. If you aren't too
familiar with the genre then this isn't a bad one to try out, as it
has plenty of action and entertainment for its runtime and at least
for me tonight, was entertainment that helped me forget the awfulness
that happened in Boston. It also proved that if anyone happens to
have the name Rambo, he'll be awesome.
I'll
be back Wednesday night.
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