After the death of a colleague, a British police officer is sent out to Spain to investigate the incident and finds that the murder is connected to an illegal drug-smuggling ring that will stop at nothing to keep their identities a secret and put him in danger to solve the crimes.
This was a decent enough if somewhat underwhelming Giallo/procedural mixture. When this one works, it's due to the film's strong adherents to the genre's formula which produces some rather fun and striking stalking scenes here. The opening ambush scene where the killer targets the one victim from behind, a great ambush at a riverbank where the killer strikes a victim with an assault rifle before taking shots at the hero who tries to escape in the car nearby and the rather nice stalking in the apartment room which has some tense moments before the realization of who's in there with her. However, the influence of the procedural crime/thrillers at the time brings along some rather nice traditional action elements here with the multitude of fist-fights and brawling that occur throughout here which includes a series of hand-to-hand fighting that's far more brutal and hard-hitting than the traditional Giallo sequences and gives this a wholly different tone. Likewise, the car chases through the mountain roads in the outskirts of the city feel more in tune with that particular genre and the finale features a traditional action-movie style series of shootouts where he takes out the henchmen that flies quite in the face of the traditions of the genre, going against the black-gloved killer appearing before the last survivor archetype that is used here first for the shootout in the compound before the final fist-fight at the docks which is all fun even though this here is decidedly unconventional when it comes to this particular style. The fact that there's not a whole lot throughout here is what tends to be the biggest flaw against this one, as there's way too much tough-guy machismo that flies completely against the expected usage of Giallo norms that gives this one a rather action/thriller tone here rather than a more suspenseful offering. The pacing does make for a solid make-up here, but it doesn't utilize these into any kind of suspenseful tactics for much of the time, resorting to gunshots for the majority of the kills and rather strong action sequences rather than stalking here that makes for a dull time in points. There are some solid points to this one but it does have its flaws.
Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Nudity, Language and drug use.
