In Italy, the crime rates have skyrocketed to such great heights, it’s enough to make a police commissioner throw his hands toward the sky in resignation and cry, “Mama mia!” What’s an authority figure to do? Well, there is always the idea of assembling a team of super cops who are not only crack shots, but aces on motorcycles — a Stunt Squad, if you will.
Cool concept, no? It’s an awesome idea. Unfortunately, director Domenico Paolella (Hate for Hate) fails to pay it off. He didn’t quite make that movie.
What he did make is more in line with the guns-a-blazin’ hallmark of Eurocrime. The criminals at Stunt Squad’s core employ a devious plan of rigging public phones with explosives, and once the devices are wired for maximum wreckage, gang leader/handsome man Valli (Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Antonio Margheriti’s Car Crash) enters a nearby booth, inserts a coin and dials an explosion. To Valli, the more collateral damage, the better.
That brand of ruthlessness results in the formation of the Stunt Squad, but don’t go look going for characterization, which begins and ends with its members donning matching yellow helmets. All but a modicum of vehicular mayhem ensues, to audiences’ sheer disappointment of what could have been. Paolella includes a make-good sequence at a disco club where the ladies lose their shirts, so viewers won’t lose their minds. —Rod Lott