4.0
Score

Starring Luc Merenda, James Mason, Vittorio Caprioli & Irina Maleeva Written by Story by Galliano Just; Screenplay by Fernando Di Leo, Ernesto Gastaldi & Nicola Manzari Directed by Fernando Di Leo Rated ‘Unrated’ Contains Violence, some Language, some dramatic situations, and A REVENGE SEEKING EX-MOTOCROSS SUPERSTAR FATHER! Runtime 98 minutes Year Released 1975 Country Italy.

Kidnap Syndicate (original title reads something like a news headline: The City Devastated. Hunting the Ruthless Kidnappers) is a tale of two films.

The first film which most of people saw it on 123Movies is a tense and somewhat thought-provoking look at class structures in Italy and the fine line between successful business people and criminals. The second film is a hard-nosed revenge flick that delivers gunplay, fistfights, and the requisite car/foot/dirt bike chases. It feels like a Fernando Di Leo film all around but with a clear dividing line that separates the first two acts from the third. Di Leo’s lack of transparency here hurts an otherwise excellent film with some great performances, action, and drama. Let’s get to it!

The plotting here is relatively straightforward: two young boys have been kidnapped–one belonging to a wealthy businessman (James Mason) and one belonging to a blue-collar mechanic (Luc Merenda).

Colella’s (Merenda) son, Fabrizio, happened to witness the kidnapping of his friend Antonio Filippini and attempts to intervene. In the chaos, the kidnappers snatch both kids, and the game is, they say, afoot. James Mason plays the elder Filippini who sees the kidnappers as businessmen like himself, and who should negotiate for a better price than the £10,000,000,000 they are asking for. This naturally infuriates Colella, who thinks Filippini should just pay them and be done with it. Once the kidnappers are pushed to a breaking point, things turn bad, and Colella must use his apparent detective skills he picked up on the Motocross circuit to track down the bastards responsible for this mess. Hey, if Vin Diesel can be all car whisperer in Fast & Furious, I’m willing to give this one a pass, too.

Coming off what I thought was an excellent performance in Di Leo’s Shoot First, Die Later (review), I wasn’t exactly pumped to watch another Luc Merenda starring vehicle.

Well, color me impressed here because Merenda is fantastic here and I can see what Italian film-goers saw in the French-born stud. It’s all a matter of perspective here in that Merenda plays a good guy pushed to do questionable things. In Shoot First, Die Later, he played a scuzzy crooked cop who was forced to do some good stuff and, as a result, didn’t come off as likable. Here, you feel for him as he is battered down by the system and his social and financial status. He would do anything and pay any amount to get his son back.

Some of his dramatic scenes come through as fiery and righteous. It doesn’t hurt that he gets to play off the great James Mason (in full-on “I’m in a foreign flick playing a sleazeball because I need a paycheck/my career is on the downswing” mode) who thinks they should wait out the kidnappers because he doesn’t want to invest any of his potentially dirty money into the “deal.” It’s great watching Merenda act more and more angry towards Mason in their several scenes.

We are also treated to Di Leo regular Vittorio Caprioli playing a police commissioner who is just about to take a long-deserved vacation when he gets the call about the kidnapping. In a role that sets his character up as the bumbling comic relief, Caprioli finds great thespian magic in conveying the frustration of being a civil servant who can barely scratch by. At the same time, the Philippines of the world can spend £10 billion without batting an eye because they know they’ll make money back. Caprioli is also featured in a heartbreaking scene where he has to break some awful news and plays the sequence superbly.

All of this takes a back seat around the 50-minute mark when Colella goes rogue and begins to hunt down the people involved in this awful scheme.

The score from another Di Leo regular, Luis Bacalov, kicks into high gear, and we know we are in for it. Di Leo stages a similar sequence to the bag drop scene at the beginning of Caliber 9 (review) with Colella following the handoff of the eventual ransom money paid. It’s a great piece of funky music and the kind of virtuoso sequence we expect from Fernando Di Leo.

From that point, the movie explodes into a flurry of chase scenes and gunfights with Merenda’s Colella deconstructing this criminal organization from the ground up. What’s great is that he doesn’t get them arrested; he straight-up murders all of their asses. It’s classic revenge-fantasy stuff that always gets my blood pumping. Merenda plays the entire 3rd act with a stoic coldness that makes him even more compelling than the frustrated father from the first two acts. Highlights include some fantastic and harrowing dirt bike stunt work that calls to mind the car chases from The Italian Connection (review) and Shoot First, Die Later. Merenda is completely insulting one of the perpetrators by refusing to continue talking business with him because he’s low on the criminal totem pole. There is some excellent stuff to be found here.

The aforementioned downside for me was a structural one, with the film being split stylistically the way it was.

The first 50 minutes or so don’t even feel like a Di Leo film (except for the kidnapping sequence), and yet they move quickly enough and are compelling. By the time the film switches over to revenge mode, it feels more Di Leo-esque, but the fact that the film switches is its problem. Stylistic changes in the movie should be subtle and transparent, not visible, and almost jarring. Your mileage may vary here, but I didn’t care for the change-up even though I enjoyed the film thoroughly.

Raro Video’s Blu-Ray is a mixed bag.

There are some shots in Kidnap Syndicate that are the best I’ve seen from these Di Leo box sets, and there are a few shots with some odd blue dots in the dark patches that are strange and distracting. Nothing hurts the film per se, but there are some anomalies nonetheless. The audio performs well with Luis Bacalov’s sometimes uncharacteristic and sometimes characteristic score coming through fantastically. The various chases and gunfights also sound commanding enough for a movie from 1975. Raro Video should continue to be applauded for their efforts as the overall package is fantastic, so my hat is once again tipped to them.

Kidnap Syndicate is a bit disjointed structurally, but that doesn’t hurt the fact that both “parts” of the film are poorly constructed.

On the contrary, the film entertains with political and social subtexts, dramatic and tragic scenes, and action sequences with equal aplomb. Luc Merenda puts in a fantastic performance alongside some excellent support here. This one gets a robust 3.5 out of 5 DIRTBIKES DRIVEN THROUGH GLASS WINDOWS!