With those often suspiciously swishy Bronx gangs (with their full on 80’s puffy hairdos, headbands and dancer-like fighting moves) from Italian maestro (and rip-off artist with chutzpah) Enzo Castellari’s previous film 1900: The Bronx Warriors’ now disbanded and forced underground by a private domestic military police force working directly for the totalitarian corporate state (gee, who could believe something like that could happen? Can anyone say ‘North Dakota Standing Rock pipeline protests’?), the rival members suddenly find themselves forced to join together to fight back as the greedy corporate heavies have declared a ‘relocation program’ of the lower economic classes in the Bronx to ‘New Mexico’ to re-build the oppressed borough as a playground for the affluent (with no one paying much attention to the fact that the guys doing the relocating are openly burning the residents alive with flame throwers, or the fact that “Annihilation Squad” is clearly imprinted on the side of their trucks).

Yes, you might say it’s a bit heavy handed… then again, when you consider how a recent still celebrated black President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and treated as a loving, thoughtful ‘dove’, as he went on to extend the previous vilified President’s two illegal wars into seven, continued a brutal drone attack program that led to untold civilian deaths, and ended his last year in office by ordering 260,000 bombs dropped on the Middle East (that’s three an hour, every hour, twenty four hours a day, for a full year, for anyone outside the mainstream media who might be willing to count), I’d argue the film underplays its political observations.

It’s the return of Trash, with the young Mark Gregory’s impressive physique growing a bit more into the action hero role this time around. While I wouldn’t say he’s any more lithe on his feet than in the previous effort (he just can’t seem to get that big buff frame of his moving all that quickly), at least he no longer has that really odd giraffe strut of his on display (then again, Castellari might have learned a few lessons on how to shoot the guy since the first one) and actually manages a bit more gravitas in the performance department.

The story is even simpler than the first one with the film mostly a non-stop barrage of shootouts, burnings, heads getting bloodily bashed and slow-motion explosions as the spirited Bronx gangs fight against the invading suit and helmeted faceless hordes to preserve their home (the Bronx may be a wasteland, but it’s their wasteland!).

A crazed Henry Silva (in featured image) replaces Vic Morrow’s sadistic, Nazi-style commandant villain role from the first film, playing a psychopathic leader of the Annihilation Squad and he hams it up with equal psychotic aplomb (though with less openly maniacal laughter than Morrow went with). And while Antonio Sabata Jr as one of Trash’s main old gang rivals who he ultimately joins forces with isn’t bad… I can’t help but miss the cigar-chomping shameless bravado that Fred “The Hammer” WIlliamson provided in the parallel role of the original film.

It may not be great filmmaking, but — as with most everything I’ve seen from Castellari at this point — the style is muscular and admirably straightforward. It’s also better executed than the first film which was already pretty good (even if the final death of our main villain in this comes across as strangely anti-climactic – I can only imagine some kind of budgetary restraint). The gang outfits aren’t quite as openly absurd this go around, but I wouldn’t exactly argue realism either. The whole thing moves along briskly… and I’m certainly fond of the determinedly anti-corporate/anti-authority stance Castellari takes with the film. You gottta hand it to those Italian filmmakers, whether indulging in the rarified air of bourgeois high art or toiling in the fields of high-paced exploitation, they seem admirably willing to be political in their work.

Buck A Review   enzo castellari   italian cinema   post-apocalyptic film