I'm a big fan of these Italian crime flicks, and while Emergency Squad may not be the best one to come out of Italy during the seventies; it's decent enough and does deliver most of what I have come to expect from this sort of film. Emergency Squad does not really add anything new to the genre, and director Stelvio Massi did do better four years later with the Maurizio Merli vehicle 'Convoy Busters'. The main reason I wanted to see this film was for the fact that it stars the excellent Tomas Milian, though like Stelvio Massi; this doesn't represent his best work either. Tomas Milian plays Interpol officer Tomas Ravelli, who finds himself on the trail of a gang of crooks after a botched robbery which left a police officer dead reveals that one of them is using the same gun that was used to kill his wife years earlier. Although it's not his case, Ravelli goes after the criminals anyway to gain revenge for what they did to his wife. He later forsakes the police force, leaving him free to get the crooks by any means necessary...
One of the reasons why this isn't Milian's best work is down to the role he is playing. Almost Human clearly shows that Milian is much more at home playing sadistic criminals; so seeing him as a copper, even one that is happy to break the rules, just isn't putting him in a position to do what he does best. The supporting cast doesn't stand out as much as Milian (as usual), though it does feature esteemed stars such as Ray Lovelock and Stefania Casini. The film does feature the staples of the genre; there's a fairly good car chase, plenty of shootouts and the leading man gets to throw his weight around on several occasions. The film benefits from tight plotting and a storyline that doesn't veer off on a tangent often, as plot lines in other Polizi flicks often do. There's not a great deal of violence in the film, though that isn't a big problem as the plot itself usually contains enough to keep the audience entertained. Overall, I won't name Emergency Squad as one of the very best of the genre, but it's a decent enough film and I can recommend seeing it to my fellow Polizi fans.
