AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

dworldeater Not to be confused with Mark Walberg's recent action flick of the same name. This is a tough and gritty Italian crime thriller from legendary director Lucio Fulci. Although best known for his gut churning work in the horror genre, Lucio has a diverse filmography of various genres he made. Contraband will surely please fans of his work in the horror genre as this film delivers big time on extreme violence and gore. Blood and guts splatter across the screen when bullet ridden bodies are filled with lead, Heads and body parts get blown off with sheer brutality from gunfire. While the action is not as abundant or crazy as a John Woo film, the aftermath of these gun battles is much more messy and sadistic in its execution. This film is centered around Luca(Fabio Testi), a cigarette smuggler who is at odds with a ruthless French gangster that is into selling narcotics and looking to dominate the underworld in Naples at any cost. This triggers a series of tragic events that have our hero Luca ready for all out revenge. In this brutal and depraved mob flick, the violence is very extreme and sadistic including scenes of torture and rape. The film is some pretty solid piece of gangster action, with great direction acting and sick gore f/x. Contraband is quite under rated in my opinion and is a great mob flick.

radiobirdma NOPE, capital letters. While Signore Fulci once had some not-too-big ambitions ("Paperino", "Lizard in a Woman's Skin"), this less than mediocre mafia/ poliziotto mix has one okay scene that maybe lasts a bit more than a minute: when the bad ol' boys of the Camorra, all withered pensioner consiglieres with pale moustaches and spectacles, settle the accounts with their tommy guns, including Non-Maestro Fulci in a cameo role. Apart from that, you get a nonsensical script, probably the worst and already then totally outdated disco soundtrack of the early 80s, highly unattractive Italian housewives plus a black transvestite in the females roles, hairy vaginas, a bit of zombie make-up, a bunsen burner held to a lady's face, an anal rape Napoli style ... a bag of guilty pleasure goodies, some might think, but it's all as gritty and shocking as the spaghetti bolognese at Luigi's grimy restaurant next door. Even the (Danish) DVDs extras don't tease afterwards. Here, you won't stay for dessert.

Kaliyugaforkix This attempt at crime drama by Fulci is a success for probably the wrong reasons but Contraband is still an entertaining piece of ultra violent Pasta for the dedicated Fulci-phile and other adventurous film-goers in search of Italian junk-food.Luca and his brother Adele make their living smuggling cigarettes in Naples. Luca (Fabio Testi) is more than happy with distributing smokes, a small vice in the grand scheme of black-market goods but unfortunately one mafia don doesn't hold with the Di Angelis brothers' conservative POV and is hell bent on pushing the brothers and their partners out of the way (read: whack in the messiest method possible) seizing their territory to distribute the kind of hard stuff that would send Tony Montana on an all night bender. From there on, we're witness to the most spectacularly violent scenes of carnage I've seen in this genre. Those who think Fulci would be restrictive of his usual excesses in a non-horror flick are thankfully proved wrong. As gun blasts disintegrate skulls, unravel intestines and generally soak the screen in squib blasts (not to mention the Bunsen burner applied to a face and a bit of the ole' non-consensual in & out) you realize Fulci has just transferred his usual outrageous flamboyance from Gothic horror to gritty crime drama. The sadistic set-pieces he's mostly remembered for are in ample evidence, if not as expertly re-produced, so there's no reason a seasoned veteran of spaghetti horror should pass this up. A chance encounter with a steaming lime pit and interesting applications of a cork-screw are just a few more novel instances of brutality the filmmaker vomits out, situations closer to the absurdly contrived knock-offs of slasher flicks than a lean, mean bullet ballet.Fulci-regular Sergio Stalvatti is on-board but unfortunately doesn't duplicate his photographic skills from Fulci's living dead quartet and consequently, Contraband does look sadly plain on that front. Like most of his movies Fucli does flounder in the pacing department too, taking his sweet time to get going( like the ultra-cheese disco scene that's murder on the eyes, the best example of the whole trashy retro eighties ambiance of the thing). Once it does though its good gory fun for those who can stomach the sadistic escapades, most of which are shot in delicious, ridiculous Peckinpah slow–mo so the viewer can really savor the graphic bodily harm. When a gun blast liquidates a mafia boss's face the glaringly obvious dummy head barely registers; it's just part of the outrageous window dressing of this over-the-top mafia cheese movie, much the same way the pipe-cleaner tarantulas of The Beyond were just part of the show. If you surround your blatantly fake fx around enough solid, real world material apparently it's not as hard to swallow.Concerning the rape of Luca's wife, not to mention the loving detail with which the blowtorch scene is filmed (the damsel's face frying to a crispy black in a typical Fulci leering zoom) Contraband is one of the Maetsro's anti-woman exercises. This is a guy's show through & through, the sort of bruised machismo we've been accustomed to since at least The Godfather; the ladies here only get in the way. The violence is perpetrated in a more of a real world context I guess I'm saying, not the dreamy landscape of the living dead epics which makes the misanthropic vibe more difficult to laugh off (something taken to the max in New York Ripper).

Scarecrow-88 Lucio Fulci's lone foray into the Euro-crime genre stars Fabio Testi as Luca Di Angelo, the brother of a slain mobster who must somehow survive the mafioso takeover of the sadistic Marsigliese(Marcel Bozzuffi)in Naples, Italy, also vowing revenge against him and his sleazy gun-toting henchman. The Marsigliese is targeting all the mob gangs who run illegal smuggling operations, wishing to take over the whole city as chief crime-lord, but the thorn in his side is Luca, who is willing to do whatever it takes to avenge his brother's murder(..which, adding to the agony, happened not far from him).My very first Poliziotteschi was entertaining for it's graphic blood-letting and enthusiastic staging of gangsters and hoods being killed/beaten in ultra-violent ways(..I do wonder if the slow motion action set-pieces, where characters fall from great heights or through windows, was inspired by Bloody Sam). Bodies riddled by bullets, with lots of blood squibs. A woman's face is viciously scorched. Brains shot out the back of a mobster's skull. A spike stabbed into a hood's chest as blood slowly leaks out. A throat is blown apart. Even though Fulci wasn't directing a horror flick, he could still serve up the blood shed unrestrained within a serviceable plot dealing with a criminal world wrought with violence and corruption.The cast and story are quite familiar to what you often associate with mafioso tales featuring betrayal, revenge, & violent methods at securing power, prestige, and wealth. A shared empire is desired by a mafioso boss with a grand scheme to run coke through Naples without the trouble of other mobs dealing in lesser "risky" criminal ventures. Interesting enough, we are taken right into the criminal underworld as investigators attempt to solve the string of murders occurring across the city. But, we see how crime doesn't always pay and if you are immersed in this culture, as Luca is(..pulled into assisting a smuggling empire with his slain brother and other capos), there's a possibility that you endanger those you love. In CONTRABAND, Luca's wife is kidnapped, badly beaten, and anally raped as the Marsigliese demands a partnership(..it's all a set-up to finish off the last, remaining capo left in the city)in his drug-running operation. Nifty climactic showdown with old retired dons helping out Luca against Marsigliese and his thugs with even Fulci getting to fire a machine gun! Composer Fabio Frizzi provides a rather disco-funkadelic type of score coexisting within a brutal crime story. Saverio Marconi has a memorable role as a trusted mobster, Luigi Perlante, who is in cahoots with the Marsigliese, Ajita Wilson(Macumba sexual)has a minor role as part of Luigi's entourage, and Romano Puppo is the Marsigliese's cold-blooded trigger man. Venantino Venantini is Captain Tarantino and Fabrizio Jovine is the Chief of Police, trying to end the smuggling operations plaguing their economy-deprived city. The film's bread-n-butter are the shoot-outs and assassinations, with Fulci trying to cover up the story's inadequacies with lots of action. The film does suffer some pacing issues with an on-going gag involving Guido Alberti, as the powerful Don Morrone, watching television, with only an appetite for spaghetti westerns. Photographed by the great Sergio Salvati, Fulci's long time cinematographer(..and a staple for Charles Band productions as well). Special effects from Germano Natali, a long time collaborator with Fulci and Argento, whose work here is satisfactory(..the stand-out, besides the brains exploding from a skull, being a henchman's stomach exploding from a shot-gun blast, with his intestines spilling out on the street;the weakest effect showing the obvious fake head of a mafioso being blown apart by a machine gun).