Cop Game

In a case of shameless plagiarism, Flora Film serves up one rip-off after another as it rolls out a variation on the previous year’s Italian trash flick Phantom Soldiers, which itself is a variation on Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Of course, the team of Drudi, Fragasso and Mattei can’t be satisfied with just one “model of inspiration”, so they throw in a paraphrase of the American film Off Limits. And of course the result not only falls short of the narrative quality and craftsmanship of its inspirations, but it also fails to live up to the promise evoked by the typically bombastic cover art of the video cassette. The overall utilitarianism of the production becomes apparent upon watching a larger number of Mattei’s films (particularly Born to Fight and Strike Commando 2, which were filmed simultaneously with the same actors) and other cheaply and quickly made Italian movies of the time, in which one can identify the exact same shots. This time, however, the filmmakers tried to give the impression of a major production by buying archival news footage from the Vietnam War, which they inserted into each sequence. Nevertheless, the climax ends up being just a load of would-be tough-guy talk and senselessly overwrought twists with characters that no one is interested in. Unlike other films made by the same team, Cop Game unfortunately doesn’t offer much in the way of entertainment, so it is interesting rather as a curious exhibition of Flora Film’s pragmatic practices. (08/01/2023)