Valli (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) and his gang our muscling their way into a cut of the local businesses one bombing at a time. The extreme violence of Valli’s attacks which leave so many dead have prompted the police to take drastic action to end the racketeer’s reign of terror. Inspector Grifi (Marcel Bozzuffi) is the cop you can’t stop and the perfect man for the job. Soon Grifi has assembled an elite law enforcement team, or “stunt squad”, whose sole aim is to bring Valli to justice.
Domenico Paolella’s Stunt Squad (1977) is a hyper violent take on Magnum Force (1973) that is rather anomalous within the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Paolella’s specialties had always been westerns and sexploitation films so his move to the poliziotteschi genre late in his career is sort of unusual. But most of the tone and nihilism of Stunt Squad most likely comes from Paolella’s co-screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti. Today Sacchetti is most famous for having written Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) and City Of The Living Dead (1980) as well as Mario Bava’s The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) and A Bay Of Blood (1971).
For the first half of Stunt Squad the plot and stylization is boiler plate poliziotteschi. Paolella does some interesting framing in collaboration with cinematographer Marcello Magliocchi, but nothing all that earth shattering. However, once the first chase scene is underway, Paolella’s direction tightens up, delivering a series of fast paced adrenaline fueled spectacles of violence and vehicular mayhem.
As the manhunt becomes more and more urgent the contrast between Grifi and Valli likewise grows. Grifi, even when given a free hand to find Valli, is constantly restrained by his own moral code and sense of justice. Valli, in true Sacchetti tradition, becomes more and more heartless and sadistic as the police close in on him. Then, in an inspired twist of fate, the final “showdown” between policeman and criminal never happens. As soon as Valli is wounded by Grifi a mob forms, carrying off Valli to his death and disarming Grifi. This mob has always been there in the poliziotteschi film in the background as fodder in the fight between cop and crook, but in Stunt Squad they are mobilized to dish out their own brand of vigilante justice.
Stunt Squad is one of the best films of the poliziotteschi genre because of its ending. Paolella’s direction is competent throughout, but that final climax, which better fits a western in some ways, elevates the whole of Stunt Squad. Paolella’s acknowledgement of the faceless crowd that is “the people” in these films totally subverts the genre and dispels its Romantic delusions. The mythical status of the showdown trope is discarded to make way for a fantasy that is born out of a reality where bombings are a common occurrence.
