Gretchko

After the spaghetti western craze in Italy died out in the mid-1970s, Lee Van Cleef still found himself wanted by Italian filmmakers for several years afterwards, "The Squeeze" being one of his post-westerns. Although Van Cleef was in his 50s when this movie was made, he still had the stuff that made him a star, and he gives a solid performance here. Another good performance in the movie comes from Karen Black, who is pretty convincing as a kind of ditzy neighbor who enters the life of Van Cleef's character. The movie also has better than average production values for an Italian production for the time, with on-location filming in New York City that gives the movie an authentic feeling at times. However, despite all this good stuff, the movie is still somewhat of a struggle to watch. It's very talky, with long stretches with nothing happening. A few more action sequences would have helped considerably. There are a couple of twists in the final few minutes, but it's too little too late. In short, the movie is probably only for die hard fans of Lee Van Cleef during an unusually slow night.