Last Updated on April 19, 2021 by rob
Commissioner Bertone (Enrico Maria Salerno), a good cop trying to uphold the law in the hunt for a pair of murderous young bank robbers finds his job challenged by a sceptical district attorney Riciutti (Mario Adorf) who won’t believe his claims that a well organised vigilante squad is executing anyone it disapproves of. Only a dogged news reporter named Sandra (Mariangelo Melato) seems sympathetic to Bertone’s plight even as his investigation threatens to uncover the identity of those behind the vigilantes.
More drama than action movie, this is an unusually thoughtful variation on the ‘vigilante cops’ theme with Salerno’s copper, Commissario Bertone, caught between a voracious press pack who believe it their duty to hound the police remorselessly and the impossibility of the cops doing their job under laws and provocations that seem almost perversely designed to let law-breakers get away with it. The situation is tailor-made for vigilantism but when the execution squad arrive any catharsis we might feel at watching scumbags get their comeuppance is quickly obviated by our reaction to the brutal execution of one of the bank-robbers and the subsequent cold-blooded murder of several prostitutes. Vanzina makes these vigilantes, who prowl the red light districts in their cars at night posing as policemen, a genuinely scary presence.
He wants us to fear where, as a society, all this might lead, yet to his credit doesn’t back off portraying the criminals as absolute monsters who must be brought to book too. The only sympathetic figures here are Bertone and a friendly hack named Sandra (Mariangela Melato), but even Bertone’s authority has been rendered all but impotent by an unsympathetic district attorney, Ricciuti (Mario Adorf). When Bertone finally catches up with the remaining bank robber (and after this kid has perpetrated an unbelievably savage act of violence on a female hostage) so too do the execution squad and once again Vanzina surprises us by having Bertone protect the kid even though we’d love to see this monster die very, very painfully after what he’s done and so, one suspects, would Bertone.
The film’s climax leads, as do many others of this genre, to a conspiracy involving a retired judge (Cyril Cusack) and a pessimism that sees the bad guys win and the values embodied by Bertone pass to Mario Adorf’s distinctly dubious district attorney. Will he uphold those values? It’s an open question. All in all Execution Squad is a pretty compelling genre film, not least because it deploys its arguments both for and against vigilantism with considerably more honesty and sophistication than the likes of, say, Magnum Force or Death Wish. The English dub (no subtitles) is rather good, the film boasts some impressive night cinematography by Riccardo Pallottini and Stelvio Cipriani’s score effectively underlines the bleak worldview on display here.
