Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Rome Armed To The Teeth



Runtime: 90 minutes (the copy I saw, anyway)

Directed by: Umberto Lenzi

Starring: Maurizio Merli, Arthur Kennedy, Giampiero Albertini, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Tomas Milian

From: Dania Film

Yep, another poliziotteschi film for me. Don't worry, I'm still using Netflix Instant for the time being for stuff like documentaries, which I'll probably talk about in one big post where I briefly talk about some of them. For now I decided to watch this particular film solely due to the description I found on IMDb: “A tough, violent cop who doesn't mind bending the law goes after a machine-gun-carrying, hunchbacked psychotic killer.” YES

Turns out, once I watched the movie, that was part of the plot but the entire story is that the loosest of loose cannon cops (Merli, who has an appropriate cop 'stache) goes after a criminal organization which the hunchbacked psychotic killer (Milian) is a part of. The cop-Leonardo Tanzi-deals with various thugs who go after him and his lady (Omaggio) but also deals with other random criminals, from a guy missing a hand to young rich punks who enjoy gang-raping women. Yeah, this is a pretty sleazy tale, no surprise given the director.

Overall, while I could have done without the gang-rape stuff (even if most of it isn't shown; there's still a bit where it's implied they use or are about to use a big piece of wood as “a giant wooden dildo”) and seeing multiple women get slapped around, this was still SO wildly entertaining and fun, I enjoyed it all. Tanzi isn't afraid to beat the crap out of suspects in his custody to get the right answers, including kicking them in the balls; that is a trademark of his, hitting people below the belt. Seeing him wreck dudes is always a delight. You better believe he catches up to the gang-rapists and what happens to them... satisfying.

You get the expected here, with shootouts, car chases, brawls, and getting to see Alfa Romeo's, Fiat 500's, and Citroen DS vehicles all around. Here, Tanzi pulls a John McClane and crawls around in air conditioning ducts. That was interesting. So was seeing Kennedy, who appeared in such movies as Lawrence of Arabia and The Glass Menagerie.

So yeah, this is another nice example of a movie in a genre that I think is pretty damn awesome. I'll be back Thursday afternoon.

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