It’s a pretty physical role, with Testi involved in a few nice stunt set pieces and handling them well. Fabio Testi is believably charming as the main man out to put an end to the French gang’s invasion of his turf and he does a good job in the lead. There’s a fairly sordid atmosphere to the whole thing and overall, if it isn’t on the same level as some of Umberto Lenzi or Fernando Di Leo’s crime films made around the same period, it does work quite well on its own level.
Plot-wise, this might not be the most groundbreaking film ever made but Fulci paces it pretty well and turns the violence level all the way up in a few scenes, giving the FX team plenty to do. There are a fair amount of shoot outs and scenes of gun play in the movie, and they all pretty much end in bloody violence. It’s also rife with splat-tastic special effects from Germano Natali and Roberto Pace, and it would stand to reason that a lot of the film’s likely modest budget went to squibs. Set in a reasonably logic-barren world where cigarette smugglers are not only the good guys but seem to be the main backbone of Naples’ economy and are even sanctioned by the Catholic Church, Contraband is nicely shot by Sergio Salvati and set to a pretty great pseudo-disco score by none other than Fabio Frizzi. But Luca’s new worst enemies aren’t going to take this lightly, and soon enough Adele has been kidnapped, at which point he grabs a few guns and decides to end this feud once and for all.
Soon enough, the French gang has knocked off a whole lot of Luca’s associates, including his brother Michele (Enrico Maisto), at which point he decides to team up with some of the local rivals and even a few Mafioso types to beat the Frenchmen at their own game. Things take a turn for him when Il Marsigliese (Marcel Bozzuffi), the head of a French drug peddling operation with a penchant for cruelty has his men move in on Luca’s gig, using force to make sure that the message is head loud and clear. Luca is, essentially, a reasonably well-natured crook living the good life with his wife Adele (Ivana Monti) and kid and enjoying his work.
He and his team spend their days evading the cops trying to shut down their operation by driving really fast in their motorboats. The movie takes place in Naples, Italy where we meet a cigarette smuggler, Luca Ajello (Fabio Testi). Lucio Fulci’s one and only attempt to get in on the Eurocrime phase that was so popular in Italy in the 1970s was this later entry, 1980’s Contraband, also known as The Smuggler. Cast: Fabio Testi, Marcel Bozzuffi, Ivana Monti, Saverio Marconi
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