Strangely there's no review for this revenge action thriller, highly unusual for the time. As in all Warsaw Pact states, socialism was in a downward spiral in early 80s Hungary. Yet its movie industry enjoyed a high level of prestige owing to award-winning co-productions like Mephisto (1981). So film makers had a little more freedom to do genre as long as they kept politics under the rug, which made the underlying social critique even stronger.
This is a good example for that. A divorced engineer-turned-taxi driver gets fleeced by two old lady passengers. His employer and the police think he bagged the money for himself as he's constantly broke, so he concocts a scheme to sniff the ladies out by himself. Although the police discover that he has stumbled over a something big, he resorts to blackmail which quickly escalates.
What feels like a Steve McQueen film is chock full of scathing social commentary - an ex-girlfriend actress prostitutes herself for some cash, thieves live a life of luxury while college grads can't get a job, police are everywhere yet ineffective, thugs can be hired at any subway station for a pittance and decency is suicide.
The year 1982 saw a lot of changes in the socialist sphere that ultimately led to its collapse, Brezhnev's death, martial law in Poland, consumer goods scarcity, foreign currency shadow economy all contributed to an atmosphere of decay that this film manages to convey in action format. Another example for this use of genre film as social criticism would be the Yugoslav epidemic horror Variola Vera.
