The Big Racket
7.6 /10 1 Votes
Director Enzo G. Castellari Duration Country Italy | 7.4/10 IMDb Genre Action, Crime, Drama Running time 1h 50m | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1976 (1976) Writer Enzo G. Castellari (screenplay), Massimo De Rita (screenplay), Massimo De Rita (story), Arduino Maiuri (screenplay), Arduino Maiuri (story) Music director Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, Maurizio De Angelis, Guido De Angelis Screenplay Enzo G. Castellari, Arduino Maiuri, Massimo de Rita Cast Fabio Testi (Inspector Nico Palmieri), Vincent Gardenia (Pepe), Orso Maria Guerrini (Gianni Rossetti), Glauco Onorato (Piero Mazzarelli), Marcella Michelangeli (Marcy), Romano Puppo (Doringo)Similar movies Directed by Enzo G Castellari, Fabio Testi movies, Poliziotteschi movies Tagline Someone's gonna pay... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The big racket trailer
The Big Racket (Italian: Il grande racket) is a 1976 Italian poliziottesco film directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Fabio Testi stars as a police inspector who takes on a gang of hoodlums who terrorise an Italian city by extorting cash from local shop and bar owners.
Contents
Cast
Production
The role of Doringo, played by Romano Puppo was a role Castellari initially wanted for Lou Castel. The Big Racket was shot at Incir-de Paolis in Rome and on location in Rome.
Release
The Big Racket was released in Italy on August 4, 1976 where it was distributed by Titanus. The film grossed a total of 1,479,567,800 Italian lire.
The film was released by Blue Underground on DVD.
Reception
The film received mixed reviews. Film critic Morando Morandini started his review writing ""It's a fascist film. It's a vile film. It's an idiot film" and subsequently criticized the violent and "reactionary" morality of the film.
In his book Italian Crime Filmography, Roberto Curti referred to the film as Castellari's best work and praised the action scenes in the film stating that they "outdo anything that had been done in Italy until then" and that "Castellari pulls out all the stops." Castellari stated that when the film was shown at retrospectives, someone always asks me how he shot the scene where Fabio Testi is trapped in a car while vehicle is tumbling down a ditch. Castellari also considers the ending of the film as the best one he has ever shot. AllMovie noted that the films "clever script" that builds "up in tension and brutality until it reaches its explosive finale." The review praised the acting of Fabio Testi, Vincent Gardenia and Renzo Palmer and prasised the direction of Castellari stating that he "directs the film with his trademark kinetic sense of style, keeping up a sharp pace that blends action with quieter, more atmospheric, moments and deploying bursts of slow motion at just the right time during action scenes"
References
The Big Racket WikipediaThe Big Racket IMDb The Big Racket themoviedb.org