{"id":11880,"date":"2015-07-23T02:15:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T06:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11880"},"modified":"2015-07-23T11:50:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T15:50:46","slug":"dvd-contraband-the-smuggler-luca-il-contrabbandiere-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11880","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Contraband \/ The Smuggler \/ Luca il contrabbandiere (1980)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Contraband1980\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Standard<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Blue Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0August 3, 2004<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Crime<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0After Luca’s brother is mowed down by gunfire, the gang’s new leader must convince associates to refute the influence of a sadistic heroine-peddling Frenchman.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Theatrical Trailer \/ Star & Director Bios.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As much as Contraband<\/strong> is affected by weak dubbing (many of the male voices don\u2019t wholly fit the age of the actors) and a sometimes uneven script with odd bouts of humour, there\u2019s much to admire in this rare non-horror effort by Lucio Fulci, especially the film\u2019s semi docu-drama style, with Sergio Salvati\u2019s loose camerawork trained on grungy Naples locales, and Vincenzo Tomassi\u2019s razor sharp editing which keeps the film\u2019s pacing quite tight.<\/p>\n

Fulci was one of four writers credited with the scenario, but it\u2019s a surprisingly cohesive if not fairly generic crime entry in which a local Neapolitan gang fights for survival when a French heroine dealer called the Marseillaise (The French Connection<\/strong>\u2019s Marcel Bozzufi) seeks to not only realign the gang\u2019s distribution of contraband cigarettes to hard drugs, but massacres everyone in sight, leaving just Luca (Fabio Testi) alive for a no-choice deal. The fact the Marseillaise is willing to wipe out his only<\/em> viable Italian contact is pretty absurd \u2013 with no local partner, how\u2019s he going to move product? – but the heavy bodycount just ramps up Luca\u2019s rage until all hell has to break loose.<\/p>\n

Fulci\u2019s fixation on sadistic violence is as dominant here as in his horror work, with faces burned off, throats blown out, and intestines sloshing out of freshly excavated tummies, and Luca\u2019s wife is put through a revolting rape by Marseillaise\u2019s scumbag executioner in a sequence that doesn\u2019t really make sense – Why doesn\u2019t Luca just lie and agree to the Frenchman\u2019s terms to save his wife from further brutality? \u2013 but it\u2019s part and parcel of this mean-spirited drama that substitutes violence in place of car or street chases.<\/p>\n

The dialogue ranges from banal to occasionally witty, and alongside some very black humour there\u2019s a bit of a socialist undercurrent in which the government is chastised for not looking after the poor and being responsible for the 1930s American gangsterism that\u2019s raging through the city. Even though the gangs break laws, they deal in cigarettes and don\u2019t want to upset the local order because it\u2019s clearly bad for business.<\/p>\n

Drugs mess up a perfectly functional system where most battles seem to end as stand-offs \u2013 both Luca and his brother lose $2 million worth of cigarettes in the film\u2019s opening sequence, but it\u2019s more of s thorn than complete disaster \u2013 and seem to bring out the worst in crooks, leaving it up to members of an older class of mobsters to exact a \u2018market correction\u2019 by essentially rescuing Luca and his wife at the last minute. (Midway in the film, the veteran don is repeatedly seen watching TV, flipping channels as banal adverts and TVs shows offend his taste buds until a decent spaghetti western pops up.)<\/p>\n

Part drama, part black comedy, Contraband<\/strong> has its share of flaws, but what grounds the film is Testi\u2019s strong performance, underplaying his reaction to the mounting brutality but still revealing the inner torment of a good brother transformed into a tool of vengeance when his mentor is massacred and wife is assaulted.<\/p>\n

Also of note are some exceptional stuntmen who perform really risky actions \u2013 in one stellar sequence, when Luca\u2019s bother is machine-gunned, it\u2019s very clear it\u2019s a person tumbling Homer Simpson-style down a jagged ridge before crashing into the water below \u2013 and really intriguing locations, including a ship graveyard, and a city dump smoldering like some underworld hell.<\/p>\n

Fabio Frizzi\u2019s score features a strong central urban-pop theme, but it\u2019s often hacked up and repeated throughout the film; besides the weak dubbing, the music edits are very harsh, and in the film\u2019s opening scene, the music often cuts out when there\u2019s English dialogue.<\/p>\n

Blue Underground\u2019s DVD features a decent transfer of the uncut Italian version, but what\u2019s needed at this stage is a Blu-ray edition featuring both English and Italian dub tracks with English subs, allowing the original performances to really resonate.<\/p>\n

The archived trailer blows all the main money shots, while text bios provide decent profiles of Testi and Fulci, who\u2019d previously worked together on Four of the Apocalypse<\/a> <\/strong>(1975).<\/p>\n

An interview with composer Fabio Frizzi discussing the restoration of the film’s soundtrack is also available<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As much as Contraband is affected by weak dubbing (many of the male voices don\u2019t wholly fit the age of the actors) and a sometimes uneven script with odd bouts of humour, there\u2019s much to admire in this rare non-horror effort by Lucio Fulci, especially the film\u2019s semi docu-drama style, with Sergio Salvati\u2019s loose camerawork trained on grungy Naples locales, and Vincenzo Tomassi\u2019s razor sharp editing which keeps the film\u2019s pacing quite tight…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3812,3811,2298,3813],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-35C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11880"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11894,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11880\/revisions\/11894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}