Action Junkie: Street Law and an Intro to the World of Italian Action Cinema

The Poliziotteschi films are a fickle bunch for a genre. Some, like Street Law, I feel are pure entertainment gold through and through; however, some…well, while they offer moments of great cinematic carnage, tend to veer in more deplorable directions. At times, the treatment of women can be downright despicable, and even Castellari, who maintains more appropriate sensibilities with Street Law, eventually succumbed to cheap shock tactics later in his career. The genre does offer a lot of fun: interesting characters, unusual plots, and in-your-face spectacle. To their benefit, Poliziotteschi films feature ideas, and go further into exploring daring criminal feats than what you’d typically see in any American action/crime flick. For another example, just check out, Machine Gun McCain, starring John Cassavetes, and watch for the sequence in which he attempts to knock over a casino, essentially by himself.

Not only does Street Law stand apart from other films in its own sub-genre, but is also far more consciously aware than most American or Asian counterparts. After Carlo is pushed to the level of bloodlust, he attacks one of the criminals far more viciously than he ever intended to, leaving the question of whether or not he killed the thug in the air. The fact that the movie takes time to contemplate a bad guy’s death, and Carlo’s reaction to that—which is one of heavy emotion, involving some crying—is something of an oddity to the action film. Most films in the action genre work to ignore the repercussions of the deaths of the villains; in fact, part of the criteria for a film to fit said genre is to outright ignore real world consequences in general, unless they pertain to the function of furthering the plot or character development.

Another moment in Street Law that stands out is Castellari’s use of flash-forward editing. Carlo once again runs afoul of the criminals, and as they hand out another beating, this time also dragging him through pools of water and mud, which is amplified all the more by the fact that Nero insisted on doing as many of his stunts as the filmmakers would allow, the film cuts to the after-effects of the beating, where Carlo contemplates his situation—a meditation that in turn leads to flashbacks of all the warnings people Carlo knows offered to him. It is a deft moment, clever in its use of imagery, and one that shows an attention to detail that is not only passed over in most action films, but in a lot of Castellari’s own movies that he would go on to make afterward.

A lot of what helps make Street Law gel together for a great movie of this sort is a rather surprisingly strong script by Arduino Maiuri, based on a story by Massimo De Rita. The story takes a very critical attitude towards the Italian authorities. The cops are portrayed as somewhere between weak-willed and corrupt, possibly protecting the criminals. What’s clever is that the story never focuses on this angle of the police’s motives; it steers clear of speculating government motives, something that might have inhibited the film’s release or success. It was number one at the box office in Italy for a time. Instead, the script tells a hypothetical story of what could happen, and in some cases was happening, because of the police’s inaction.

The other fantastic element that combines to achieve Street Law’s excellence is the score by two Italian music greats, brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. A combination of psych, funk, and vocal-folk rock, the score jives and pulsates under Carlo’s inception into the Italian criminal underworld. Vocals amplify his search as epic and arduous, and when the action gets to go, the score hits us with thunderous bass lines and screeching melodic guitars. One of the film’s finest touches is the throwback it makes at the very end to its roots in pulp tales. as the words, in a typography recalling the yarns of old, “The End” are displayed across the screen to a freeze-frame image of Franco Nero, all the while the film’s thematic song, “Goodbye My Friend” plays over it. The image of Nero eventually drops away, and against the image of the black screen we hear the full remainder of the song play out.

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Benjamin Nason is a writer, film-maker and critic from the Pacific Northwest, where he lives with his cat Lulu.

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