User Reviews

A bit different to the usual vigilante films, half expected something like Death Wish, the Exterminator or The Big Racket (Which are all great films by the way) and instead it's something a bit more realistic and well thought out. Maybe the action sequences should have been more evenly spread through the film though. What makes it different to the other films is the main character doesn't wipe out hundreds of punks, it is more a story of his calculated revenge and builds it's story up more steadily. Franco Nero plays the most haphazard, cack-handed vigilante ever but is great in the role, certainly more expressive than Robert Ginty in the Exterminator. Not that that's difficult mind. His character is obsessed with revenge and it is well portrayed. It is easy to sympathise with his character and it is engrossing watching him get his revenge. Nero does a lot of his own stunts too including some great stuff with him getting chased and knocked down by a Ford Mustang in slo mo. How he didn't get killed or crippled is incredible.

Talking of cars poor Franco has to make do with an Austin Allegro through most of the film.

Anyway to summarise a good solid well acted film, quite violent, great music score, very well staged action sequences and satisfying climax.

Very much worth a watch.

The best part of this film is definitely the scene where a filthy and beaten-up Franco Nero has to outrun a '66 Mustang in a junkyard, complete with a really good long lens slow motion shot of Nero running toward the camera with a car right behind him.

The plot details Nero's quest to bring three bank robbers (Romano Puppo, Nazzareno Zamperla, and Massimo Vanni) who took him hostage and beat him up to justice. To do this, he blackmails a local street thug (Giancarlo Prete in a good role) and forces him to show him around the underworld and eventually find them to exact vigilante justice on them. What sets this mundane tale apart are the frequent changes-of-alliance and doublecrosses, as the action sequences are relatively weak (considering it's a Castellari movie). STREET LAW is not really that violent either when compared with most other Italian crime films. (Compare Romano Puppo's final scene here with a similar scene in Lucio Fulci's CONTRABAND.)

Guido and Maurizio De Angelis's score is certainly similar to their work for the many Bud Spencer / Terence Hill films (though not under their usual Oliver Onions pseudonym), but to me sounds a lot better. While the songs are weird and use seemingly every possible instrument and sound in the book, the "Good Bye My Friend" song is a great song even though the lyrics in most of it make no sense. The same can be said of "Driving All Around". Nero once again plays the same character he plays in every movie, but his character is not totally developed (though that may have been hurt severely by the confusing re-editing of the US version that I saw) and his relationship with his girlfriend Barbara Bach is barely touched on. While the plot is simple, it often becomes uninteresting, and certainly doesn't have the more epic feeling of Castellari/Nero's previous film High Crime. Castellari's next film (the goofy but surreal CRY ONION) tried to capitalize off this one, with Nero once again up against the same trio of thugs along with another over-the-top De Angelis score, though any similarity with this film ends there.

Watch for an amusing cameo by charismatic American actor Mickey Knox (who made a career as a dubbing voice in many Italian movies and Japanese Anime cartoons) as a gangster who runs a gaming parlor.

Not a great film, but colorful and different enough to make it entertaining to most casual viewers.

After being taken as a hostage and beaten by three vicious bank robbers, an "average guy" (Franco Nero) becomes outraged by the refusal of the police to take drastic action and decides to go on a personal war against the underworld. The script of this slick-looking, violent tale is standard crime-movie stuff, but director Castellari manages to put in some stylish shots and to stage a gripping final shootout. It's almost as if you're watching a spaghetti crime thriller. (**)

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!

"Street Law" (1974) is one of Italian genre director Enzo G. Castellari's many crime thrillers. Italian superstar Franco Nero plays an ordinary citizen who is temporarily taken hostage and beaten by a group of sadistic bank robbers. He tells his story to the police who blow him off after accusing him of being reckless in fighting back with such dangerous criminals. Good old Nero decides to take the law into his own hands and stage a war with the thugs, against the wishes of his girlfriend (Barbara "Mrs. Ringo Starr" Bach) Director Castellari is credited as being one of the pioneers of the crime/police thriller genre in Italy. He proves to be ingenious in his simple mastery of action sequence staging. His use of Peckinpah-style slow mo is also damn exciting. The editing and cinematography are also very striking! Another plus is the catchy rock score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis that adds real punch to the great opening credit sequence.

"Street Law" isn't exactly a stand-out or a distinctive piece of cinema in the endless array of action movies from around the world, but Castellari sure as hell is!

Here's one of my absolute favourites of the Eurocrime era that turns just about everything about genre on its head. There's no indestructible heroes here. No massive gun battles either. There's barely even a romantic subplot, unless you count the bromance between Nero and Prete. Hell, everyone even stops to reload their guns - that's how realistic this one is!

Castellari begins by showing us three hoods breaking in to an apartment and wrecking it, even pissing on a framed newspaper article from the second World War regarding the liberation of Italy. We then get a credits sequence that, set to an awesome prog soundtrack, details the crime wave in Genoa. Finally, we get to the actual plot, starting off with mild mannered Franco Nero going to the Post Office to cash out his earnings.

Franco's world is shattered when three violent hoods rob the Post Office, rough up a few folk (including a priest), then take Franco hostage for standing up for himself. It's during the car chase that follows that we meet the robbers for real. There's huge, violent Romano Puppo, small, violent Massimo Vanni, and some other guy (also violent). They beat Franco senseless and leave him in the car for the police to find while they switch cars and speed off.

Franco finds that the police aren't going to be much help and decides to take the law into his own hands, much to the annoyance of police detective Renzo Palmer, and even more to the annoyance of his girlfriend Barbara Bach. It's around this time that we realise it was Franco Nero's apartment was the one that was trashed at the start of this film, and that the newspaper article was a kept by Franco as a memory of his father, who was executed by the Nazis. It's therefore understandable that Franco rises up against the criminals and tries to track them down. The problem that soon becomes evident is that he's really, really bad at it!

So instead of having a kick ass killing machine mowing down half of Genoa's criminals, we have Franco Nero getting a drubbing from some petty gangsters and generally getting caught out stalking other criminals. That is until he gets the idea to start blackmailing armed robber Giancarlo Prete. Using Giancarlo, he starts edging closer to the post office robbers, but in doing so Franco uncovers corruption and starts feeling guilty about blackmailing Prete, until things come to a head at the end.

I'm not sure why people have issues with Nero's performance here, because he does fine as the stubborn citizen who risks losing everything for revenge. His watery eyed look of shock as he underestimates the violent capacity of his enemies is worth the wait, as is the performance of Prete as a petty criminal who wants out of the life he's stuck in. Barbara Back hasn't got much to do mind you, but Romano Puppo and Massimo Vanni comes across as nasty, over confident hoods who might be violent, but are still out-smarted by Nero. Here's a special paragraph dedicated to the soundtrack:

Special paragraph dedicated to the soundtrack: There are basically two pieces of music that make up the soundtrack, with many different variations. One is 'Goodbye My Friend', a proggy rock tune, and the other is 'Driving All Around', a bongo driven funk track sung by a man who sounds drunk. Both work really well in all their variations, and although we get hints of Driving All Around, the song is introduced proper when Franco gains his first true lead. "Goodbye My Friend" is also used to great effect when Franco thinks the cops are going to bust his enemies, with the music crashing to a halt to allow Franco to scream in frustration.

Also adding to the package as a whole, as usual, is Enzo's hyperactive camerawork and inventive editing that makes a plot that should bore much more interesting and appealing. So there we go. One of the best. Most of the cast would return again and again in Enzo's work. Puppo, Vanni and Palmer would return for Enzo's next Eurocrime project: The Big Racket!

Shot in the same year of the american "Deathwish" with Charles Bronson, has a similar plot but it results much more realistic and exciting. The great Franco Nero's performance and the brilliant music by the De Angelis brothers make of this an "absolutely must see" for all the fans of this kind of movies !

Taut and cynical thriller with a good pace, throbbing soundtrack, decent cinematography and not a little bloody violence. Very much of the times this is a somewhat depressing tale of ruthless criminal activity and police corruption.

The not so pretty side of 70's Italy brought vividly to the screen with a workmanlike performance from Franco Nero and little more than sweet innocent looks from Barbara Bach.

In fact a little more involvement from the ladies would have made this that much more enjoyable but if it's non stop chasing and shooting done with some style you are after this is certainly your number.

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...

The same year "Death Wish" came out, Italy would have its own revenge film. It's an individual who has been tired of the police's incompetence, and would decide to take the law into his own hands. In "Street Law" Franco Nero plays Carlos, a model citizen who gets robbed at the post office by a gang of robbers. But these guys aren't ordinary robbers, they are members of the underworld. That would make it difficult. So he makes his way by having one of the robbers help him out. It wasn't easy, but it was effective enough to let them know that he is a force to be reckoned with. He's one angry man, close enough to be like America's Paul Kersey. An oldie but a goodie. Worth the watch. 2 out of 5 stars.

The comments largely have it right, though not always the right conclusion. Many said, "not the usual revenge flick", and a few of the less sentient commentators dissed Franco Nero's performance. Put it all together and that's precisely why this gets 8/10 from me. MUCH better than anything Charles Bronson did, and I think better than a lot of the Spaghetti Western "revenge" movies. Nero's character isn't invincible. He's not even very good at it. But that gives it a realism that owes more to Italian horror films than to the westerns. Perhaps that's why Barbara Bach is in it. Could have changed her name...

Very much a period piece, if it seems a bit much at times, you need to read up on what Italian society was like when this was filmed. A strike every other day, a bombing on the off days, petty crime rampant, sex drugs and rock 'n roll everywhere, police on the take, mafia shakedowns about anywhere, kidnappings, extortion... If you're not going to make a primo revenge flick in that milieu, I guess you never will. The Italian title is more descriptive. "A Citizen who Rebels".

Enjoyable vigilante action thriller from Enzo G. Castellari, staring Franco Nero. Feels like a riff/cash in on Death Wish, but was in fact made before the release of Winner's film - according to Nero, the two films were in production at around the same time. Plenty of action - pretty much non stop from the off in fact - street crime, car chases and of course violence, as you'd expect from Castellari. Very light on flesh though, and indeed females are in very short supply generally, even Barbara Bach, the female 'lead', hardly gets any screen time at all. The always reliable Guido and Maurizio De Angelis provide a lively, and generally very good soundtrack. Best viewed in it's full uncut glory, there have been a few different versions over the years, but the complete version is freely available now. Acting & direction are solid, but it must be said there are a fair few superior Poliziotteschi films from the same period.

Carlo (Franco Nero) is taken hostage during a robbery, beaten up and finally released. He's got the impression that the police are not trying hard enough to catch the criminals, so he takes the law into his own hands ("I am tired of being a docile good citizen"). Carlo becomes not a cool super hero all of a sudden such as Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris or Clint Eastwood oftentimes. He makes stupid mistakes, for example asking too directly for underworld connections or being discovered when tailing suspects - it's learning by doing, so to speak. Furthermore, Carlo is not an entirely sympathetic character, since he slaps his girlfriend in the face, leaves her without much regret (very unlikely if she looks like Barbara Bach, but anyway) and doesn't even have a good answer for her question: "Do you really think the way of bringing law and order is becoming an outlaw?" But when he informs the police about some gun trade, the criminals receive a warning immediately, and Carlo feels confirmed in his belief the men who are officially in charge cannot be trusted. This message and the gratuitous violence caused inevitably negative reviews from the left wing critics, but in the end, people want to see a fast moving action movie, and that certainly is delivered by Enzo Castellari. I don't suppose many in the audience feel tempted to get a shotgun and try for themselves to hunt killers. Cynical - yes, dangerous - no. Movie is fantasy, also about our dark sides.

I had the opportunity to visit the locations at Genoa where "Il cittadino si ribella" was shot, and it's quite amazing how much they could shoot on the main road along the sea - if that is blocked by a film team, the whole inner city is cut off as you hardly can drive on the narrow streets around. So they must have made those car chases in the middle of an unsuspecting public - bet you need nerves of steel, driving a car in Italy.

I'm really starting to develop a love for these Italian cop flicks - and Street Law is hands down one of the best that I've seen! This entire genre owes itself to Don Siegel's classic Dirty Harry, but Street Law apparently takes most of it's influence from Michael Winner's "classic" Death Wish (I say apparently because I haven't seen Death Wish all the way through). The film focuses on crime in Italy, but unlike many Italian cop films; this one doesn't put crime in a 'cool' light, or focus on a police investigation; as our main character here is an engineer named Carlo Antonelli, a man who is beaten by a band of robbers one day while at the post office. The humiliation is too much for him, and he can't get these four men off his mind - and so revenge becomes his main priority. However, he quickly finds that finding out information in the criminal underbelly isn't easy as most people don't want to talk; so, via blackmail, he recruits a young criminal named Tommy to help him find the men who humiliated him and get his revenge - Italian crime flick style!

Street Law was directed by Enzo G. Castellari, a man who also directed the big hits 'The Big Racket' and 'The Heroin Busters', so it's obvious that he knows his way around a crime thriller! This one features all the staples of the genre - car chases right from the off, as well as fistfights and shootouts and it's hardly dull for a second. This film also sets itself apart from similar films due to its atmosphere; which gritty, tense and has a very downtrodden sort of feel. The film features a starring role for seventies Italy's top hard man, Franco Nero. It's not your usual Nero performance, however. I'm more used to seeing him calm, cool and collected in Spaghetti westerns and Giallo - but here he gives a frenzied, frightened performance; yet he still fits it well, as you can really believe that this man has been dragged into a bad situation against his will. Giancarlo Prete is his co-star and does well, while the film also features Barbara Bach - but the former Bond girl hardly has any screen time at all! Apparently, the ending borrows heavily from Death Wish, but I don't care as it's highly entertaining and provides the perfect climax for a tale like this. Street Law is HIGHLY recommended to all fans of Italian cinema!

Actor Franco Nero and Director Enzo Castellari teams up after the success of High Crime to deliver one of the best Eurocrime Action movies inThe Same Year where Almost Human , Emergency Squad, Cry Of The Prostitute , How To Kill A Judge etc another great Eurocrime action movies were released. Franco Nero played the role of Carlo Antonelli an Engineer who got beaten and robbed by some Street Criminals. Nero First tried to take help from law but the law betrays him then With the help of another robber who also betrays him first but helps him after that. Franco Nero Turns into vigilante in order to get revenge from the robbers. This forms the rest of the story.

Direction Wise Enzo Castellari did a decent job but not as great as compared to His great directorial work in High Crime (1973). Acting Wise Franco Nero, Barbara Bach ,GianCarlo Prete and the rest of the cast did a tremendous job.

Dialogues in the English version are great.

It was released in the same Year in which successful and classic American Vigilante movie Death Wish (Starring Charles Bronson as the Vigilante) was released. Both vigilante movies were totally different from each other and great in their own respect. Street Law was commercially Successful too.

Like all the bad reviews here, mine will be about the same. You have the main action during the first 13 minutes, a must see and then an improbable plot. And i don't see why people compare this movie with Death Wish.

In Death Wish Bronson's wife is killed so he went for revenge. Here the guy only lost a handful of money in a bank robbery and got beaten. The police can't help him so he got mad and manages to kill the bandits.

Worth watching for the first 13 minutes, Barbara Bach's beauty then and pure 70's old cars and old fashioned Genova, Italy.