Italy, the land of fine art and classy footwear, has also long been known for having the Mafia, Cosanostra, Ndranguetta, Camorra, drug cartels, corrupt police, serious youth crime, and all manner of violence.
In L'uomo della strada fa giustizia (literally translating as The Man in the Street Implements Justice) you get a feeling that by 1975, the year this film came out, Italian society openly rebelled against the crime situation. More than anything else, this Umberto Lenzi effort reflects social unhappiness over the crime rate in the country, and how any innocent person could become victim.
As in DEATH WISH, which came out in 1974, a family member is placed on the sacrificial altar for maximum manipulation. Here, it is Henry Silva's beautiful and sweet 8-year-old daughter who gets shot dead. A purportedly blind man asks for her help to cross the street, uses her to get into the bank and finally shoots her dead to eliminate the witness... but she crucially lives long enough to talk about a scorpion, which turns out to be a piece of jewelry on the villain's wrist.
Henry Silva never struck me as a good actor and here he just uses the same facial expressions - no range, no emotional depth - and quite frankly I kept missing Luciana Paluzzi's delicate facial features. Not that her role amounted to much, basically she just told hubby Silva to not embark on revenge but to take himself in hand and avoid violence.
Sadly, Silva does not listen to lovely Paluzzi but police prove very lenient and promptly urge him to claim that he acted in self-defense. The film's best lines come from Silva's interaction with a transexual, with some cad popping up and saying: "One of these days I'll give you something nice, say, a golden dildo."
Of course, L'uomo della strada fa giustizia cannot match the production values let alone the budget of vigilantism-related films coming out in the USA at the time like DEATH WISH, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, or STRAW DOGS. 6/10.
