Ex-cop Tiger (Michael Sopkiw) has just been released from jail. He was kept under lock and key for a slight case of vigilantism: Killing the man who killed a colleague in front of his eyes and then - when Tiger didn't back down - murdered his wife.
His last friend on the force greets Tiger with giving him a new experimental super shotgun (the kind that also shoots grenades) and admonishing him not to use it against the corrupt D.A. who was responsible for his sentence. Puzzled by this type of mixed signals, Tiger decides to retreat to his old backwoods home somewhere in Deliverance County, where great mock country plays on the soundtrack and the locals spend their time with the mass slaughter of animals - they export their victims to the Chinese medicinal market.
Leader of the pack is a certain Wally (Stefano Mignardo), a natural born psychopath and brother of Tiger's old friend/rival Tom (George Eastman). Tiger's taste for slaughter and violence has died down quite a lot over the years and soon Wally (whose taste for slaughter and violence is a big as is accent is fake) and Tiger lock horns. You really can't blame the ex-cop. He mostly just wants to be left alone; he just has a hard time tolerating people fucking with him.
When his daughter Connie (Valentina Forte) arrives to finally get to know a father she hasn't seen in eight years, things seem to take a turn for the better. Another attack by Wally even leads to Tiger backing down and promising Connie to go away to the big city with her.
Alas, Wally and friends don't really care, and after they kill Tiger's cop-friend, Connie's boyfriend and then Connie herself, Tiger gets kind of angry. And they shouldn't have made him angry.
Blastfighter is one of Lamberto Bava's better films and a small classic of Italian action cinema. What stands out in a very solid effort for me is not so much the action as the nice character work. Some of the writing surely is a bit cheesy, but the characters' psychology seems rather sound for a backwoods vengeance flick and the acting is surprisingly effective (if you can ignore the silly accents of the local yokels). Michael Sopkiw is especially good as the sullen loner whom he gives a big enough amount of warmth and humor to actually make you care about him. The scenes between him and Eastman and him and his daughter are giving the action a grounding more action films could use, making the inevitable carnage that much more interesting.
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