Wordiezett So much average

GazerRise Fantastic!

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Coventry Italian cult/exploitation cinema from the 1970s is definitely my favorite type of film-making, but I just cannot seem to decide whether my number #1 beloved sub genre is the Spaghetti Western, the Giallo or the Poliziotteschi. Recently, and thanks to having seen a couple of brilliant titles like "The Big Racket" and "Revolver", I'm leaning most towards the Poliziotteschi again and evidently my expectations for "Street Law" were also set incredibly high. Of course this has to be a great movie, with a director like Enzo G. Castellari and a cast led by none other than Franco Nero. Due to its vigilante themes and time of release, many ignorant people claim that "Street Law" is nothing but a quick attempt to cash in on the tremendous success of "Death Wish", with Nero copying the famous role played by Charles Bronson, but I swear you this film is much more than an uninspired rip-off. It's an action/thriller classic in its own right with story lines, action sequences and characters drawings that are totally different than anything featuring in "Death Wish", or any other contemporary vigilante-thriller for that matter. During the exhilarating opening sequences, Castellari already shows a lovely montage – guided by adrenalin-pumping music – illustrating that the streets of a nameless big Italian city are infested with violent crime. During broad daylight there are muggings, car and home jacking, robberies, drive-by shootings, nihilistic mafia executions and there are never any police authorities in sight! In this same city, Franco Nero stars as the anonymous lab-worker Carlo Antonelli who's unlucky enough to walk into a bank with his personal savings moments before three savage robbers come storming in. When Carlo too obviously tries to recover some of his own money, the robbers roughly take him hostage and leave him severely beaten up in their getaway car. Frustrated, humiliated and accused by the police of being provocative, Carlo vows to track the criminals himself. This is where the big differences with films like "Death Wish" become unmistakable, because Carlo obviously isn't a forceful fighting machine or strategic genius and spends most of the film's running time either getting physically pulverized or getting busted when trying to infiltrate into the underworld. Come to think of it, this might even be Franco Nero's least heroic role! Carlo's beautiful wife (the yummy Barbara Bach) is worried sick about him and he only starts making some progress when he gets help from small time crook Tommy. "Street Law" is a terrific film, but still plays in a lower league than the absolute most thrilling Poliziotteschi classics like "Almost Human", "Milano Calibro 9", Rome armed to the Teeth" or "Rabid Dogs". There are many fantastic action sequences, most notably the final shootout in the hangar, but I still found this film less sadist and shocking than I secretly hope in this type of cinema… Oh, one more thing: dubbing always matters! This is the second or third time that I watch a film in which Franco Nero's rough and manly Italian voice is dubbed by a rather squeaky and insecure English voice, which gives makes his performance somehow weaker. Still though, a truly recommend Italian 70s cult flick!

JasparLamarCrabb Not the worst macaroni mafia movie, but very far from the best, which is surprising since it's directed by the durable Enzo G. Castellari. In what is essentially a rift on DEATH WISH (though apparently filmed prior to that Charles Bronson classic), businessman Franco Nero, after being kidnapped by a group of goons robbing a post office, decides to take the law into his own hands. The muddled script never makes clear how he's going to go about doing this. Eventually, the bad guys are found and Nero becomes a vigilante. Soon most of the underworld is arrested...There are some really goofy scenes of Nero being beaten and abused and frankly he overacts to the point of looking very silly. Barbara Bach plays "Barbara," but really has little to do. Giancarlo Prete plays Nero's only ally & Renzo Palmer is a bull-headed police inspector. Not Castellari's finest by any stretch. The mostly misplaced music score by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis adds little.

Michael_Elliott Street Law (1974) ** (out of 4) Italian crime flick has Franco Nero playing a man who walks into the post office one day and ends up getting kidnapped by the men robbing in. The three bad guys severely beat Nero and although he survives the ordeal his hatred just grows when the police refuse to help him. Soon Nero is entering the underworld to try and locate the men so that he can seek revenge. Considering this was released just three months after Charles Bronson's DEATH WISH, I'm really not sure how much of an influence the American film had on this one but the end result here just didn't work for me. I really love vigilante movies and I had heard so many good things about this one but there was just a few minor problems I had with the picture and one big one that really turned me off. My biggest problem with this film is that the Nero character is just so downright stupid that I really fell off his band wagon and in fact I started to cheer for the bad guys! I mean, really, how many stupid things could a person keep doing without someone finally knocking him off? Obviously the character doesn't know what he's doing but after doing one silly thing after another I finally just gave up. Another minor problem I had with the picture is that at nearly 105-minutes long, there's way too much dry space where nothing is happening. A major editing job probably would have done wonders for the picture. I should add that the English dubbing didn't help matters either but this isn't the fault of the film. I found the performances to be among the good things in the picture. Nero is certainly believable as the simple man and you can also believe him when he's finally had enough. Giancarlo Prete nearly steals the film as the man who is forced to get Nero information and I also enjoyed Barbara Bach in her role as the girlfriend. The only thing that really keeps STREET LAW viewable are some of the hilariously bad moments including the opening credits sequence, which shows various crimes being committed. The highlight of the picture has to be the entire sequence in a junkyard where Nero is forced to outrun a car!

MARIO GAUCI Between the mid-1950s and mid-80s, Italian cinema was replete with imitations of big Hollywood box-office successes and this one here is not just a surprisingly decent DEATH WISH (1974; released a mere three months earlier!) clone but one of the better poliziotteschi I've watched so far. Besides, it is the second of ten collaborations between star Franco Nero and director Castellari - of which I've caught up with 3 and will soon also get to THE SHARK HUNTER (1979) and KEOMA (1976)! Aren't you all envious? After an overly intense opening 15 minutes (which occasionally gives rise to some unintentional hilarity) in which we witness everyman Nero being repeatedly victimized by a band of vicious criminals, he decides to take the matter into his own hands, defying the careless (and quite possibly complicit) police force and tracking down his oppressors for one final showdown. Through the course of the film, Nero forms an uneasy alliance with a professional thief (Giancarlo Prete) who pays for his treason with his life, alienates his girlfriend (a pre-Mrs. Ringo Starr Barbara Bach - incredibly, she kept starring in Italian potboilers even after becoming a Bond Girl in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME [1977]) and coerces the Italian underworld into a manhunt within its own ranks a' la Fritz Lang's M (1931)! The score by frequent Castellari collaborators, Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, is an effective one, except when relying on an almost unintelligible song warbled in broken English...which is all the more ironic when one knows that Hollywood musicals often suffered the ignominy of having their classic songs dubbed into Italian when screened on TV! On the other hand, I cannot imagine that a film like this (with its frequent use of Italian swear words and dialect) would be as enjoyable in English which, unfortunately, is how it is presented on the Blue Underground DVD. Luckily, I watched it on my VHS copy recorded recently off Italian TV but, of course, I'm missing the Enzo G. Castellari Audio Commentary...