Verdict
Summary
Raro Video’s new Blu-ray release of The .44 Specialist arrives for the first time in the USA in high definition, but I found the transfer to be a little underwhelming with color fading in and out, sometimes glaringly so. The English language dub has a small chunk of missing English dialogue, suddenly dropping into Italian without warning. There’s an audio commentary y a film historian, and a trailer.
Plot:
An undercover cop infiltrates a terrorist organization.
Review:
Mark (Franco Gasparri) is a boyishly handsome cop who is ordered to infiltrate a terrorist group operating within Italy and Vienna. He gets himself arrested on purpose and impresses a pair of terrorists who’ve just helped pull off a political assassination. The terrorist calling the shots is a German named Paul (John Steiner), and his counterpart is a beautiful blonde named Olga (Marcella Michelangeli), and they require absolute allegiance and a readiness to do anything, which Mark is perfectly willing to do as long as his superiors in the police force give him the green light. When he goes to Vienna, his contact in the force is an American (played by John Saxon), but when Mark finds himself targeted, he realizes that the American is working against him and wants him dead. Narrowly escaping with his life, Mark eliminates his contact and goes rogue, but when his terrorist cell hijacks a train full of innocent people, Paul kills an undercover cop working with Mark, setting Mark on the warpath to help destroy Paul and his group, which means that Olga – with whom he’s been having an affair – might very well become collateral damage.
A solid enough Italian ’70s poliziotteschi from director Stelvio Massi, The .44 Specialist felt to me like the ’80s Stallone film Night Hawks, but done on a smaller scale, adding a romantic element that gives the film a heart. The movie is well cast, with Steiner a good, crazed villain, screaming at one point that he’s ready and more than willing to kill innocent women and kids just for the hell of it. It makes his explosive death in the movie all the more satisfying. Stelvio Cipriani did the score.
Raro Video’s new Blu-ray release of The .44 Specialist arrives for the first time in the USA in high definition, but I found the transfer to be a little underwhelming with color fading in and out, sometimes glaringly so. The English language dub has a small chunk of missing English dialogue, suddenly dropping into Italian without warning. There’s an audio commentary y a film historian, and a trailer.
