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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

How sad is this?

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A typically intense police thriller from gore meister Lucio Fulci which has recently enjoyed its first uncut UK release thanks to the guys at Shameless. All of the cheesy gore effects are now present and correct allowing British viewers to see the movie as it was intended. As for the film itself, we're in familiar territory here with a good-hearted petty criminal caught up in a world of Mafia killers, vengeful assassins, and the like. A big influence is inevitably THE GODFATHER although it's definitely a Fulci film in look and style.The first third of the film is a little slow as it sets up the plot. I've always found Fabio Testi a second-tier actor and it's hard to really like him here as he does dither around a lot. However, things pick up with the first fight scene at the sulphur pits and remain above average from there. THE SMUGGLER features more death and destruction than in a dozen American crime films put together. Fulci, best known for his gory horror films like ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, inserts plenty of his trademark excessive violence into his film with people being shot and hit and spraying blood all over the place.Things really get going with a choppily-edited series of murders, where we get to see people machine gunned for what seems like an endless time - they even turn around halfway through in order to get the full treatment. An assassin goes on a rampage of murder for about twenty minutes of screen time and the level of on screen violence is just outrageous. However, the worst violence is meted out to female characters, with a horrendous rape scene and a bit involving a Bunsen burner that'll have your eyes watering. Then there's a predictable but nonetheless exciting shootout at the end, with loads of people biting the bullet, as it were.

NOPE, capital letters. While Signore Fulci once had some not-too-big ambitions ("Paperino", "Lizard in a Woman's Skin"), this less than mediocre mafia/ poliziotto mix has one okay scene that maybe lasts a bit more than a minute: when the bad ol' boys of the Camorra, all withered pensioner consiglieres with pale moustaches and spectacles, settle the accounts with their tommy guns, including Non-Maestro Fulci in a cameo role. Apart from that, you get a nonsensical script, probably the worst and already then totally outdated disco soundtrack of the early 80s, highly unattractive Italian housewives plus a black transvestite in the females roles, hairy vaginas, a bit of zombie make-up, a bunsen burner held to a lady's face, an anal rape Napoli style ... a bag of guilty pleasure goodies, some might think, but it's all as gritty and shocking as the spaghetti bolognese at Luigi's grimy restaurant next door. Even the (Danish) DVDs extras don't tease afterwards. Here, you won't stay for dessert.

This attempt at crime drama by Fulci is a success for probably the wrong reasons but Contraband is still an entertaining piece of ultra violent Pasta for the dedicated Fulci-phile and other adventurous film-goers in search of Italian junk-food.Luca and his brother Adele make their living smuggling cigarettes in Naples. Luca (Fabio Testi) is more than happy with distributing smokes, a small vice in the grand scheme of black-market goods but unfortunately one mafia don doesn't hold with the Di Angelis brothers' conservative POV and is hell bent on pushing the brothers and their partners out of the way (read: whack in the messiest method possible) seizing their territory to distribute the kind of hard stuff that would send Tony Montana on an all night bender. From there on, we're witness to the most spectacularly violent scenes of carnage I've seen in this genre. Those who think Fulci would be restrictive of his usual excesses in a non-horror flick are thankfully proved wrong. As gun blasts disintegrate skulls, unravel intestines and generally soak the screen in squib blasts (not to mention the Bunsen burner applied to a face and a bit of the ole' non-consensual in & out) you realize Fulci has just transferred his usual outrageous flamboyance from Gothic horror to gritty crime drama. The sadistic set-pieces he's mostly remembered for are in ample evidence, if not as expertly re-produced, so there's no reason a seasoned veteran of spaghetti horror should pass this up. A chance encounter with a steaming lime pit and interesting applications of a cork-screw are just a few more novel instances of brutality the filmmaker vomits out, situations closer to the absurdly contrived knock-offs of slasher flicks than a lean, mean bullet ballet.Fulci-regular Sergio Stalvatti is on-board but unfortunately doesn't duplicate his photographic skills from Fulci's living dead quartet and consequently, Contraband does look sadly plain on that front. Like most of his movies Fucli does flounder in the pacing department too, taking his sweet time to get going( like the ultra-cheese disco scene that's murder on the eyes, the best example of the whole trashy retro eighties ambiance of the thing). Once it does though its good gory fun for those who can stomach the sadistic escapades, most of which are shot in delicious, ridiculous Peckinpah slow–mo so the viewer can really savor the graphic bodily harm. When a gun blast liquidates a mafia boss's face the glaringly obvious dummy head barely registers; it's just part of the outrageous window dressing of this over-the-top mafia cheese movie, much the same way the pipe-cleaner tarantulas of The Beyond were just part of the show. If you surround your blatantly fake fx around enough solid, real world material apparently it's not as hard to swallow.Concerning the rape of Luca's wife, not to mention the loving detail with which the blowtorch scene is filmed (the damsel's face frying to a crispy black in a typical Fulci leering zoom) Contraband is one of the Maetsro's anti-woman exercises. This is a guy's show through & through, the sort of bruised machismo we've been accustomed to since at least The Godfather; the ladies here only get in the way. The violence is perpetrated in a more of a real world context I guess I'm saying, not the dreamy landscape of the living dead epics which makes the misanthropic vibe more difficult to laugh off (something taken to the max in New York Ripper).

Nasty French drug dealer, the Marsigliese (Marcel Bozzuffi), is trying to take control of the crime scene in Naples; unable to convince the Neapolitan 'capo's (Mafia crime bosses) to deal in his narcotics (they prefer to smuggle harmless cigarettes instead), he has them bumped off one by one.Eventually, only family guy smuggler Luca Di Angelo (Fabio Testi) stands between the Marsigliese and his total domination of the Naples underworld. But Luca's wife is kidnapped by the megalomaniacal mobster, and it looks as though all is lost—until help arrives in the form of several retired Mafia leaders who do not wish to see the Marsigliese succeed.Taking a break from the horror scene for which he is better known, director Lucio Fulci has a go at a different genre, but still manages to gross out the audience with the high level of violence and gore he delivers. In order to make up for what is a pretty routine tale, he throws in loads of bloody bullet hits, mutilation, a smidgen of rape, and other assorted graphic nastiness. And when he's not trying to turn your stomach with blowtorches to the face, bullets through the throat or shotgun blasts to the abdomen, he chucks in some gratuitous nudity for good measure.It is this sleaziness that makes Contraband watchable despite its mundane story, and even more enjoyable than quite a few of his horror films. 6.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 7 for IMDb).