★ 7 / 10
He's an Alien. He's a legal Alien... He's a Italian trash in New York (and Miami)!
Coventry
The "Squadra Anti-(insert type of crime)" movie-cycle ideally underlines what I love so much about Italian cult-cinema from the 70s & early 80s period. They…
The "Squadra Anti-(insert type of crime)" movie-cycle ideally underlines what I love so much about Italian cult-cinema from the 70s & early 80s period. They are wildly uneven and surprising. After the dull previous entry - "Squadra Antimafia" - I honestly presumed the series would only go further downhill, and yet this next sequel is another fun and vastly superior installment.First, a little bit of context. "Squadro Antigangsters" is the fifth entry in a series of no less than eleven (!) comedy/crime crossbreed movies, written & directed by Bruno Corbucci and starring Tomas Millian as the rebellious and unorthodox cop Nick Giraldi. The films are relatively easy to trace thanks to a specific pattern in the titles. The first five are named "Squadra Anti" + a kind of criminal activity. "Anti-Kidnap Squad", "Anti-Theft Squad", "Anti-Swindle Squad", etc. The last five movie titles all start with "Delitto", so we have "Crime on the Highway", "Crime at the Chinese Restaurant", etc. Only the sixth film has a unique title and refers to a murder plot.Nico Geraldi remained in New York after the previous adventure. He is supposedly no longer a cop and wants to focus on his greatest talent: setting up swindles and smuggling himself as a small-time crook. He ends up in the "business" as a debt collector for a mafia organization but finds out that his good friend Salvatore is up to his head in debt with his Pizzeria restaurant. To help him, he has to get money from the rich (but very ugly) daughter of the New York mafia imperium. Although she is still madly in love with Nico, Maria Sole is now engaged, and Nico discovers that her fiancé is stealing millions of dollars from the organization. If he can unmask him, Salvatore's debts will certainly be annulled..."Antigangsters" has a much more engaging and structured plot than the previous films, and it makes great use of the locations in New York and - especially - exotic Florida, where Nico and Salvatore have to endure a chase on a motorboat in The Everglades, among other things. Of course, there is still a lot of humor in the film, but no more of the exaggerated slapstick and idiotic nonsense from the first films. A very funny moment is when Nico causes total traffic chaos after a car chase, while a gang of old people tell from the balcony of their retirement home how quiet, safe, and relaxing life in Miami is. There's a nice supporting role for the beautiful Asha Puthli (which really made me wonder why she hasn't acted in more films), a catchy soundtrack, and a nice twist at the end (which is already revealed and spoiled here on the website in the plot synopsis...)
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★ 5 / 10
The Gang That Sold America
BandSAboutMovies
From 1976 to 1984, Tomas Milan starred in eleven movies in the Squadra antiscippo series. Starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans, these films include Hit Squad…
From 1976 to 1984, Tomas Milan starred in eleven movies in the Squadra antiscippo series. Starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans, these films include Hit Squad, Squadra antitruffa, Little Italy, Assassino sul Tevere, Delitto a Porta Romana, Crime at the Chinese Restaurant, Delitto sull'autostrada, Crime in Formula One, Cop in Drag and this movie.
In each of these movies, Milan plays Nico "Il Pirata" Giraldi, progressively goes from a tough Italian movie cop to a cop with a Chiense twin, one that becomes a race car driver and finally investigating Rome's gay community to investigate a murder.
Producewr Galliano Juso got the idea when he and director Bruno Corbucci were filming Il trafficone. Juso had his purse stolen by thieves on Kawasaki motorcycles, which make him wondered what would happen if the cops had an anti-snatch and grab team.
The fifth film in the series, The Gang Who Sold America has Giraldi now an Interpol agent in America. He meets the mob family from the last movie - Little Italy - including Salvatore (Enzo Cannavale) with his family and Giarra (Margherita Fumero, whose character is so close to Edith Prickley in both voice and dress that i wonder what came first; SCTV started airing in 1976, so it could go both ways), who is in love with him. Eli Walach, who played Don Girolamo Giarra, did not come back for this.
Giraldi puts two mob bosses against each other but this movie is mostly about broad comedy and action scenes, including air boats and plenty of fistfights. The beginning may be the best part, as Milan is dressed in a military jacket with a straw hat and a scarf, carrying a boombox and dancing to disco down 42nd Street. There's also a great scene where Indian singer Asha Puthli sings "The Whip" and fights criminals with Milan. Her name is Fiona Strike in this movie which is such a perfect Italian movie name.
Salvatore Baccaro, who is always an ogre in films. But the real reason I watched this?
The Goblin soundtrack. It's great, embracing full disco. Boomkat said, "The film is set in the United States, and the soundtrack sounds very American, starting from the first two songs, interpreted by the warm voice of Asha Puthli, an Indian singer who is also an actress in this movie, "The Whip" and "The Sound of Money" seem to belong to one of the many Stax productions of those years, only that they're played by... Goblin! The Roman band, whose line-up consisted of Claudio Simonetti (keyboards), Agostino Marangolo (drums), Fabio Pignatelli (bass) and Carlo Pennisi (guitar) was in those years nothing less than hyper-productive, but this did not prevent them from producing high-quality works. In fact, the album songs go through various genres (disco music, country, funky, soul, samba) with little concessions to some typical "Goblinian" moments."
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5.5/10
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