Street Law (1974) is a classic of the Italian poliziotteschi crime genre. It was one of the first breakout vigilante films of its kind, and its success helped spawn an entire wave of vigilante cinema in Italy. The film stars Franco Nero, best known for the original Django, as a mild-mannered engineer who is taken hostage and savagely beaten during a robbery. When he fails to find justice through the legal system, he decides to hunt down the gang himself. It’s a straightforward premise, but what’s interesting is how often the film deliberately undercuts audience expectations. Viewers familiar with Nero from his spaghetti westerns might expect him to deliver ruthless vengeance, but instead, he plays sharply against type, spending most of the film incompetent, physically outmatched and frightened out of his mind. He isn’t driven by an altruistic sense of justice; he’s driven by male ego, the wounded pride of a man victimised at the hands of brutes. He pushes forward on adrenaline like a man still in shock, who never got a chance to process what happened to him. And the film’s breakneck pacing (so typical of poliziotteschi) locks us inside that panicked headspace from start to finish. The action set pieces match this emotion perfectly, with frantic close-quarters gunfights and incredibly dangerous car chases that would be impossible to pull off under today’s safety standards. The highlight is a junkyard chase featuring a spectacular long-lens, slow-motion shot of Nero running towards the camera with a Mustang in deadly pursuit behind him (see below). How Nero emerged without serious injury remains remarkable, especially considering he performed many of his own stunts. If you’re new to the world of 1970s Italian poliziotteschi crime films, this is a great place to start. It’s available on Tubi, and I highly recommend it.

Heat Wave (1991) is one of the great hidden gems of Japanese cinema. It was one of the final films by legendary director Hideo Gosha, a filmmaker who made his reputation directing violent samurai classics like Goyokin and yakuza films like The Wolves. During the 1980s, Gosha increasingly turned his attention to female protagonists navigating the patriarchal world of the Japanese underworld, beginning with Onimasa (1982) and most famously with Yakuza Wives (1986). Heat Wave, his penultimate film, represents the culmination of this period. Set in Kumamoto in 1928, the film follows Orin (Kanako Higuchi), a professional gambler whose father was murdered by a yakuza enforcer when she was a child. Years later, she returns to her hometown to reclaim her adoptive family’s restaurant, which has fallen into the hands of a ruthless criminal syndicate. Complicating matters is the presence of Tsunejiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), the very man responsible for her father’s death. The film belongs to the tradition of ninkyo eiga, the chivalric yakuza movies that flourished throughout the 1960s. These films typically followed honourable outlaws attempting to uphold traditional codes of loyalty while confronting corrupt criminal organisations. Heat Wave is heavily influenced by one of the most popular series of that era, the Red Peony Gambler films, starring Junko Fuji as a wandering female gambler. Gosha takes this familiar premise in a much darker, more cynical direction, presenting a criminal underworld where honour has been all but abandoned. Visually, the film is extraordinary, as you can see from the video collage I put together below. The beautiful period architecture, smoky gambling dens and elaborate gambling rituals create an intoxicating atmosphere, with Gosha building extraordinary tension through these scenes before unleashing eruptions of grand, over-the-top violence. It’s an incredible late-career achievement from one of the genre’s greatest directors.

Kinji Fukasaku’s five Battles Without Honour and Humanity films (1973–74) are some of the greatest crime movies ever made. They’re among the few gangster films I would rank alongside classics like The Godfather, Scarface and Heat. Each film is a masterclass in visual storytelling. Legendary director William Friedkin described these films best when he said: "Battles Without Honor and Humanity is just about the best series of films of its kind. It embodies so much of world cinema that has dealt with this subject matter. It's like saying, why would you tell a writer, for example, to read James Joyce's Ulysses? Because it's a quarry for writers. In that book, you can find techniques, attitudes, approaches, language, everything you need to be a writer. For a filmmaker, you can look at Battles Without Honor and you can be immediately influenced to make films yourself. And want to go out and not imitate that, but do something else that's of the same value or quality about the world that's around you. And for an audience, they're just very entertaining. They're unpredictable, they're highly original in their approach to subject matter, even though the subject matter is not original - originality is in short shrift. And in Fukusaku's films, they're completely original to this day. And that's why they inspire. You know, works like that are as valuable as written histories."

Vanishing Point (1971), directed by Richard C. Sarafian and starring Barry Newman, is the greatest car chase film ever made. It follows Kowalski, a former racing driver who attempts to deliver a white 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in just 15 hours. What begins as a reckless race against time escalates into a massive interstate police pursuit. As the chase unfolds, a blind radio DJ named Super Soul begins broadcasting Kowalski’s exploits, transforming him into a countercultural folk hero. The film belongs to a subgenre of exploitation cinema known as carsploitation, which flourished during the 1970s. Often low-budget independent productions, these films were built around high-speed pursuits and spectacular crashes, featuring incredibly dangerous stunt driving, much of which would never be permitted under today’s safety standards. These were films brimming with attitude, with the automobile central to their appeal, representing freedom and rebellion against authority. Vanishing Point is the pinnacle of the genre. It was shot by legendary cinematographer John A. Alonzo, who also photographed crime classics like Chinatown and Scarface. There are shots in this film taken from the side of the road, where cars come skidding past the camera at such terrifying speeds and in such close proximity that you wonder how nobody was killed. Vanishing Point is so revered by Quentin Tarantino that he paid homage to it in Death Proof (2007), making the same model of car the centrepiece of the film’s spectacular final chase sequence. Stuntwoman Zoë Bell, playing herself, explains that it’s the same white Dodge Challenger driven by Kowalski in Vanishing Point, describing the original film as “just one of the best American movies ever made.” (Because it absolutely is.)