Die Viper

First film in the pentalogy from the Tanzi/Moretto/Monnezza universe (first shown: February 25, 1976)

With this film, Umberto LENZI started a series of five films in which three characters appeared again and again. The focus was on Tomas MILIAN, who played two criminal twin brothers who were very well received by the audience. In the film ROMA A MANO ARMATA, the Italian actor MILIAN plays the hunchbacked gangster Vincenzo Moretto, who is characterized by excessive cruelty. His twin brother will not make his first appearance until the second film in the pentalogy (IL TRUCIDO E LO SBIRRO).

In Rome, crimes are happening all the time. A hotheaded inspector like Leonardo Tanzi (Maurizio MERLI) cannot like that at all. The powerful inspector is always on hand when the criminals strike. But it's stupid that there are sensitive juvenile judges like the attractive Anna (Maria Rosaria OMAGGIO), the grumpy police chief (five-time ACADEMY AWARD nominee Arthur KENNEDY) and the somewhat sleepy colleague (Giampiero ALBERTINI) who put obstacles in the way of the hyperactive inspector. Whether dealer (Ivan RASSIMOV), rapist (Stefano PATRIZI) or unscrupulous gangster (Tomas MILIAN): crime in Rome never sleeps.

With this thriller, Umberto LENZI has created a film that has essentially become the blueprint for a hard-boiled Maurizio Merli poliziottesco. It was very well received by audiences, with more than 1.6 billion ITL being made at the Italian box office.

In German-speaking countries, the connections between the five films were hardly noticed. MERLI is dubbed here as Inspector Ferro. His next appearance will not be until the third film (IL CINICO, lL INFAME, IL VIOLENTO) of the pentalogy.

Roma a mano armata" barrels through the streets of 1970s Rome with a relentless energy that is impossible to ignore. The film's atmosphere is thick with tension and urban decay, painting a city teetering on the edge of lawlessness. Lenzi and cinematographer Federico Zanni craft a visual landscape that is both raw and kinetic; the camera rarely sits still, instead plunging viewers into the heart of car chases, shootouts, and back-alley confrontations. The film's grainy texture and on-location shooting lend it a documentary-like authenticity, though at times the frenetic editing can make the action feel chaotic rather than exhilarating. Still, the city itself becomes a character, its grimy streets and shadowy corners amplifying the sense of danger.

Maurizio Merli, as Commissioner Tanzi, delivers a performance that is all clenched jaw and steely resolve. He embodies the archetypal hard-nosed cop, bending rules and bristling against bureaucratic red tape. While Merli's presence is commanding, it is Tomas Milian who truly steals the show as the unpredictable and menacing "Il Gobbo." Milian infuses his villain with a manic energy and dark charisma, making every scene he appears in crackle with menace and unpredictability. The supporting cast, including Arthur Kennedy and Ivan Rassimov, provide solid backup, but the film is at its most compelling when Merli and Milian are at odds, their mutual animosity palpable even through the screen.

Despite its strengths, "Roma a mano armata" is not without flaws. The narrative is fragmented, jumping between subplots that showcase various criminal elements in Rome, from petty thieves to privileged delinquents. This mosaic structure adds variety but also muddles the pacing and dilutes the impact of the central storyline. At times, the film feels more like a collection of set pieces than a cohesive whole, and the script's attempts at social commentary are overshadowed by the barrage of violence and action. Still, for fans of the poliziotteschi genre, Lenzi's film delivers the goods: gritty action, memorable villains, and a pulsating score by Franco Micalizzi that keeps the adrenaline pumping.

This is a dumb, but thoroughly enjoyable Italian police thriller from journey-man Italian director Umberto Lenzi. Maurizio Merli is not my favorite actor (he was kind of a cut-rate Franco Nero), but he's pretty entertaining here as an over-the-top vigilante cop who slaps around suspects, engages in dangerous high-speed chases, and has shoot-outs in busy downtown Rome. When five young punks rape a girl, he goes into their hangout BY HIMSELF and beats up ALL of them up before chasing down and eventually shooting one of them to death. Even when his superior (Arthur Kennedy) transfers him to the licenses unit, he won't stay out of the action. In one of the funnier scenes, he beats information out of a bartender, breaks into a suspect's apartment without a warrant, and chases him around the Rome rooftops (in a great cinematic scene), but after the whole thing goes awry, he blames his superiors for making him go "by the book" (if that's true I'd hate to see "the book").

This movie has a great supporting cast. Besides Arthur Kennedy (who was in movies like "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" and "Rico, the Mean Machine"), the movie features Ivan Rassimov, perhaps somewhat wasted as a low-level thug who gives his girlfriend an overdose of heroin simply because she's a "pain in the ass". The best of all though, is the great Tomas Milian as a psychotic hunchback, who starts out as a sympatheic figure, but turns out to be a frightening heavy. In one scene Meri's detective slaps him around and makes him swallow a bullet, which he later he craps out and vows to shoot the detective in the face with face with it for revenge!

The real weakness of this movie is the loose plotting. There's a lot of action set pieces, but the whole thing doesn't really hold together, especially whenever Milian is not on screen. The movie also could have used more women. Merli does have a pretty girlfriend (who the villains at one point threaten to put through a car compactor), but her role is pretty perfunctory.Still this is definitely a fun movie and I would recommend it.

For the most part, this is one of the better poliziotteschi I've watched with several of the virtues associated with the genre - unrelenting action, pounding score, hard-boiled dialogue, an undercurrent of sleaze - and two of its top stars in Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian.

A measure of the film's popularity is the fact that the characters played by both leads here (Inspector Tanzi in Merli's case and Vincenzo Moretto, dubbed "The Hunchback", in Milian's) were developed into individual series: in fact, the latter appeared in two more outings, while Tanzi had only one more film to go - THE CYNIC, THE RAT AND THE FIST (1977) which, interestingly, still had Milian co-star as an odious criminal but in a totally different characterization. One other typical feature of the genre is the presence of a veteran American star - in this case, Arthur Kennedy as Merli's by-the-book superior (but who's eventually converted to our hero's iconoclastic viewpoint). The supporting cast, then, features any number of familiar faces who thrived in Italian genre movies - chief among them Ivan Rassimov and Luciano Pigozzi.

The film has no real plot to speak of - other than to place Tanzi, at times in rather contrived fashion, in the midst of some action set-up (chasing and/or beating up petty criminals or intimidating some rich-kid suspect) - and, hence, may feel somewhat disjointed. The narrative, however, takes care to include as many social plagues as possible - underage delinquents involved in snatch-and-grab cases, a gang-rape, a drug-overdose victim, a hold-up from a post office (which our hero manages to disrupt virtually single-handed), etc. Besides, while the requisite romantic subplot does come in, it's an unusually complicated one - as Tanzi's girlfriend happens to be a magistrate whom he believes to be too lenient, and the couple eventually decide to go their separate ways. That said, I feel that the climactic showdown between Merli and Milian comes up a bit short in comparison with the action sequences throughout the rest of the film.

Still, the film is quite often hilarious: my favorite moment is when Merli blows his top in front of an elderly colleague - but whose meek interjection eventually leads Tanzi to crack the case! For genre addicts, however, the absolute cult scene in the film is the one in which Milian is made to swallow a bullet by the incensed Merli - but whose tough exterior isn't quite broken in the way the latter had expected, as The Hunchback proceeds to give out a loud hearty burp in defiance!

In the end, I ought to say that I'll be getting to another of Milian's poliziotteschi - EMERGENCY SQUAD (1974), where he's actually the cop hero - soon. Also, if my Unwatched DVD backlog hadn't taken a serious beating of late (I haven't gone through much but DVD-Rs and rentals for some time!), I would have been inclined to schedule a second viewing of the film (also directed by Lenzi) which contains perhaps his most important role in the genre, i.e. ALMOST HUMAN (1974) - via the "Special Edition" Italian DVD, which comes with an accompanying Audio Commentary (not included on the R1 "No Shame" release) and a second feature (Sergio Martino's VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS [1973]) to boot!!

Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian star in probably the most typical, yet completely enjoyable Italian crime movie by Umberto Lenzi. With a blazing soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi and some exciting camerawork by Federico Zanni, this film is fast-paced and furious although the narrative makes relatively little sense. This reminds me of THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS, a film Dardano Sacchetti also penned, which was completely fun and enjoyable although it didn't make any sense whatsoever.

The best scenes in this movie have to be the extended car chases. Milian hijacks an ambulence and kills all the people on board for no reason. When it crashes in a crowded flea market, Milian jumps out of the ambulence and just starts randomly firing his sub-machine gun into the crowd to create enough confusion to get away. Another great scene has a gang of upper-class teenagers led by the baby-faced Stefano Patrizi who get bored of nightclubbing and proceed to rape a girl and beat up her boyfriend in a vacant lot. Patrizi is wholely unsympathetic as he punches the boyfriend in the gut repeatedly and knees him in the face, then making weird gestures with a nearby piece of wood. Merli later pops by their nightclub and smashes Patrizi's face right through a pinball machine and then simultaneously beats the tar out of the six or so members of the gang!

This film comes fast and furious. Good performances all around by a veteran cast (with Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov, and Luciano Pigozzi along for the ride). It's not the most coherent of Lenzi's works, but it's definitely a genre classic. Where's the DVD?