Kudos to Alfonso Breschia for going all 'meta' as the kids say and including a scene in this film where Gianni Garko approaches a film poster for Breschia's Lo Scugzzino* and talks about how Gianni Garko is great in that film, followed by a member of the public who remarks upon Breschia's film skills (or lack off).
Anyone who has suffered through Breschia's sci-fi films will be glad to know that his crime films are a little easier to digest. He includes all the stuff you want to see in a crime film: gunfights, explosions, car chases and nudity. It's still not an amazing experience by any means, but a far cry from Star Odyssey, that's for sure.
A bunch of evil gangster fellows are in Turkey and want to ship a whole load of heroin over to New York, and are looking for a stopover on the way. Somewhere scuzzy where no one will notice. You know: Naples. Customs officer Gianni Garko makes the logical choice when he pinpoints Naples as the place the heroin is going to touch down, and heads off there to ingratiate himself with the local smugglers.
What Breschia nails here is the relationship between Garko and smuggler Mario Merola, as Merola relates his story that the impoverished people of Naples have to live by selling stolen cigarettes, and the whole community would collapse if this illegal industry dried up. He shows Garko how the people of Naples live in one room apartments (including the toilet and everything else) and are decent, friendly people. This convinces Garko to have the police not lean on Merola's gang in exchange for help tracking down the heroin.
What neither of them know is that local Mob boss Antonio Sabato is behind the heroin smuggling racket and intends to get it there without any setbacks, which leads to double crossings, massacres, shoot-outs and a cracking car chase that has one guy driving a car along a moving train!
The action also switches to New York where Sabato's goddaughter (a young Sabrina Sianni) is getting married, which leads to a sequence where Sianni leads in these surreal tributes to Italy (that also hold the heroin).
I'm not revealing everything here but I will say that Garko vanishes from the film for so long I thought they'd forgotten about him. Nevertheless, Breschia does manage to tie everything up quite nicely and I found, for a change, that I quite enjoyed the film. Eighth time's a charm, Alfonso!
