The Executors (a.k.a. Street People), 1976.
Directed by Maurizio Lucidi.
Starring Roger Moore, Stacy Keach, Ennio Balbo, Ivo Garrani, Fausto Tozzi, and Peter Martell.
SYNOPSIS:
A Mafia boss is enraged when he is suspected of smuggling a heroin shipment into San Francisco. He dispatches his nephew, a hotshot Anglo-Sicilian lawyer, to identify the real culprit. The lawyer also enlists the aid of his best friend, a grand prix driver with an adventurous streak.
We’ve all heard of the buddy cop movie, but 1976s The Executors (a.k.a. Street People, a.k.a. The Sicilian Cross) takes the template and turns it into a buddy criminal movie, of sorts. It is ‘of sorts’ because whilst the two main characters are buddies who are criminals, they’re taking out other criminals, so are they the good guys? You gotta love the 1970s.
Roger Moore plays Ulisse, an Anglo-Sicilian lawyer to his mob boss uncle Salvatore Francesco (Ivo Garrani). Francesco has paid for a large ornamental crucifix to be imported from Sicily and erected in San Francisco, but it turns out the cross was used to smuggle heroin into the States, and so an enraged Francesco orders Ulisse to find out who smuggled the drugs and who has them now as they get stolen once in America. Ulisse takes on the job and enlists the help of his friend Charlie Hanson (Stacy Keach), a professional racing driver, but is this a straightforward case of drug smuggling or will Ulisse find out some uncomfortable truths about his own past?
Well, we all know otherwise it wouldn’t be a question. The Executors is an Italian production that came in the wake of Dirty Harry, The French Connection and The Godfather, and as such has a similar vibe to many of the poliziotteschi that Italy was knocking out on the cheap at the time. However, there is an air of something classier going on as the movie stars prime Roger Moore, who had played James Bond twice by this point and was about to go into production on his third – and some say best – Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, and although he never really convinces as a half-Sicilian mob lawyer he does add an air of gravitas to a script that can, at best, be described as convoluted.
The key to a good ‘buddy’ movie is the chemistry between its two leads, and The Executors doesn’t disappoint on that level as Moore and Stacy Keach bounce off each other like an established double act. This was fairly early on in Keach’s career and in his interview in the special features he praises Roger Moore for making him feel comfortable and giving him room to act, and it is a shame we didn’t see these two pair up again as their convincing bonhomie is what carries the movie when there isn’t an action set piece being played out. Given how muddled the plot gets, had the filmmakers got the casting wrong it would have been a slog to sit through, especially in the final act.
Being set in San Francisco you get the obvious nods to Bullitt and Dirty Harry with the car chases up and down those steep city streets (although nothing on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, which would have been ironic given who the star of the movie was), but don’t take too much notice of the editing during Stacy Keach’s big moment as the car he is driving (see – there is a good reason his character is a racing driver) seems to be falling apart in one shot and fully intact the next. Keach does explain in his interview that they didn’t have permits to film in San Francisco so everything was done guerilla style, which does lend an air of authenticity in a crime thriller so some rough editing can be excused.
Given a decent polish by Shameless Screen Entertainment, the Blu-ray comes with the aforementioned Stacy Keach interview, interviews with Nocturno’s Davide Pulici, a trailer and reversible sleeve featuring the seriously cool 1970s poster that in no way is exploiting the fact they have James Bond in their movie. So, overall, this is a is a superb presentation of a movie that isn’t high art but never really pretends to be.
Roger Moore does enough to convince he can be tough when the script calls for it (but not quite enough to convince he is a mob lawyer), and Stacy Keach is clearly having a blast driving around San Francisco and crashing into things (according to the actor he did all his own driving, unlike Moore who got a stunt double, as he was probably more valuable given his regular acting gig), but after the second big car chase the movie does start to lose momentum and get a bit confusing with its finer plot details. If, however, you just view it as Moore and Keach playing criminals and chasing other criminals around then, for the most part, The Executors is a solidly entertaining action thriller.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
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Chris Ward
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
