Weapons of Death/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Weapons of Death
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Crime terrorizes the streets of Naples, Italy and Santoro (Henry Silva) is the biggest thing in the Italian crime business. With armed robbery and murder he shows the police who the boss is in town. One cop, Inspector Belli (Leonard Mann), tries to get Santoro. With the help of a taxi driver, who shows what a good hobby-cop he is, he gets in one chase after another with Santoro. Even when he finds him, he has no proof to arrest him. One day, after Santoro kills a man on the street, Belli gets him and takes him to the jail. Santoro gets the chance to flee and is free again. One of the men has to win. The big finale starts at a train station. Santoro plans to kill a woman the taxi driver is bringing to the train station, but Belli is faster to the punch. He runs after Santoro and with the help of a little child he finally gets him. In a big showdown with Santoro standing on a train, they shoot at each other and finally Belli wins and Santoro is dead. Sadly, Santoro shoots and kills the young boy, who was kind of a son to Belli. Weapons of Death, or with its original title "Napoli Spara", is one of the most rare and unique Italian Polizia movies ever. Thankfully, Koch Media, one of the best German underground labels, released this film. The only thing that disappointed me on that DVD was the cutting. A few gory scenes are cut out from the film. That's very sad. But Koch Media wasn't able to get a better copy, so this is the best they could do. Weapons of Death is a very explosive movie. But not in the way Michael Bay does his stupid action flicks for the MTV-generation. Its classic, bloody entertainment with great Italian humor. The actors are fabulous too! I especially like Henry Silva. He has such a dirty, cold and hard look, its like he washes himself with sand and rocks, not soap. He has one of the most charismatic faces in cinema, similar to the master Clint Eastwood. Silva is the REAL star of the movie, I know that Leonard Mann is the leading actor, but Silva is just much cooler. He is one of the funkiest villains I've ever seen on screen. Sadistic, brutal and always with cool lines of dialogue. He plays all kinds of great tricks on the police, no European actor is cooler than Henry Silva holding a gun in his hand. The rest of the actors are very good too. Leonard Mann as the ultimate tough cop is also intelligent and shows emotions, especially when the boy dies in the end. A very fine actor in the action scenes, as well as in the dialogue and story parts.

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Then there's the action. Its great in this one! You get some awesome shootouts with big guns (well, the title of the film is Weapons of Death, so everybody expects huge guns!), some incredible car chase scenes and one of them is actually with a big truck (incredible acting by Leonard Mann in this one) and Weapons of Death shows all the silly and dumb modern action flicks who's the real boss is in town! You'll see bloody effects by Lucio Fulci's own make-up designer Giannetto De Rossi, mixed with classic European car chases and some other sadistic stuff!

I also liked the comedic parts with the young boy tricking everybody. Scenes like his "car parking service" or the fake water selling is very funny! You won't find many standard emotional scenes in this movie. Only the dying boy in the end or Henry Silva saying thanks to big Godfather: Don Alfredo. The rest is pure Italian action entertainment.

Action, cool actors, nice cars and funky music. Every lover of Italian Polizia-film should get this rare classic! Its sad that it's the cut version, but there's not another one you can get right now.

Reviewed by Ezekial

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