The Sicilian Cross (1976)

When I was a poor child living with my family outside Stockholm my best friend was Robert. He was tall and quite nice, and had like ten brothers and sisters. So it was crowded family, to say the least. One day I came up and Robert and his twenty brothers came running and presented to me something fantastic: a new Bond-movie! I knew these people so of course I was sceptical, and of course I was right. It wasn't a new Bond-movie, even if the thirty or so brothers claimed "it's starring James Bond!". It was The Sicilian Cross, an excellent italo-actioner with Roger Moore and Stacy Keach. 

Maybe it's nostalgia, but I still feel this is one of the funniest and most exciting productions to from Italy during the seventies. For it's genre of course. I'm probably wrong, but I still think it's holding up very well. It's basically The Persuaders with more violence and blood, and that's so good as it can be. Roger Moore plays the same character (more or less) like in The Persuaders, and Keach is doing the Tony Curtis-part. They're young (during the seventies everyone between 40 and 50 was consider young in movies), hot, rich, smart and funny. Moore plays a half-sicilian (Which is as absurd as if Charlton Heston had played a mexican! Well... yeah, he did once! Sorry!) and Keach is his hot-headed and car-crazy partner. 

When the police find out that there's been drugs in a cross delivered from Sicily to a church in San Francisco, our heroes get's involved to find the responsible. But not everyone are what they seem and someone unknown is trying to kill everybody involved! Double-crossing and car-chases, murders and oneliners. It has it all!

There's a trashy feeling over The Sicilian Cross sometime, when you notice that this is an italian crime movie and not a big budget Hollywood-film. But it's so well made and the script never stops to breath. Moore and Keach has both charisma enough to both support each other and still be the starts, and their work together is wonderful. The sadistic violence, funny fistfights and crazy car-chases are mixed together and it's easy to understand that this was a huge hit here in Sweden both on cinema and on video. 

The two stand-out scenes is a great one-car-chase where Keach demolish a trio of crooks expensive car. He's taking it on an unforgettable ride in Frisco and completely trashes it. Later there's also a spectacular car-chase with two cars and two big trucks, which ends in a couple of cool stunts. It never rises to the genius level of Blazing Magnums (hello, dvd?), but it's not far away. 

It's one of my favorites, maybe as a guilty pleasure. Give it a try.