70's Italian Drug Use! (The Heroin Busters (DVD))

Member Name: adambrown400

Product:	The Heroin Busters (DVD)
Date:	06/11/09 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good ending

Disadvantages: slow in places

The Heroin Busters is a loose and cheap attempt to make an Italian version of The French Connection with a little Dirty Harry for good measure.

David Hemmings plays a British undercover drugs cop who wants to track down the big guns in the illegal heroin trade. He knows that the drugs are being smuggled through customs from Hong Kong and Rome to America, but he needs help to find out exactly who's doing what.

It's a pretty exploitative film with lots of quite graphic depictions of heroin and its usage. Its not at all glamorous either painting the users in quite a nasty way for a film of this period. You might assume that Trainspotting showed heroin and its effects brutally honest, however this film also shows that 'drugs are bad okay?'

I was also pretty surprised by the language in this film, within minutes Hemmings has said s@£t three times, f&%k twice and called several people bas£ards! Shocking! On the whole Hemmings isn't too bad and has obviously been drafted in to make the film appear more relevant and bankable than it would have been before. He certainly adds some gravitas to the film, but it's certainly not a masterpiece of action and/or drama.

There are some really awful actors in the film - especially some of the would be 'users'. One quite large ginger man who is particularly awful is beaten up in a toilet and then goes on to lick the toilet bowl clean of drugs. Another is a very poorly dubbed Asian man who sells grass that is just laughable.

However, the last twenty minutes of the film are excellent. Its full of action - car chases and shoot outs in the Rome countryside. This really is worth waiting for, but the final 'boss' and his death are ludicrous.

In the end I really enjoyed The Heroin Busters. Apart from its basic title and exploitative nature, the final part of the film was hugely enjoyable and more than made up for the lacklustre beginning.

Summary: An interesting oddity