Die Gangster-Akademie

This one is kind of all over the place when it comes to general tone, but it does feature one of the most complex bad guy character in Eurocrime, and that man is played by Tomas Milian, and Tomas Milian has the most ridiculous haircut I have ever seen. It's an afro so tight it looks like a gigantic blackberry sitting on his head.

Milian plays the philosophical thief and gang leader Trashy, who runs a restaurant in Rome as a front for his gang and his thieving lessons he gives out (under the acronym F.I.G.A, figa being the Italian word for fanny (UK meaning)). Trashy's not a bad guy. He's got a young kid to a neurotic wife and constantly has one-way conversations with the kid about how much he's changed his life. Don't expect me to tell you about them because look like they were cut for dubbed versions, so all we get is the Italian track for them.

On the other side of the crime coin is Luc Merenda, a hard case cop who knows about trashy but is much more interesting in bringing down the gangster Belli, who is far more violent than Trashy, and Franco Citti, whom he suspects of murdering a politician. Merenda, plus sidekick Massim Vanni who once again seems to be wearing the same jacket he's worn in several of these films now, do their best to bring all these bad guys to justice.

On one hand this film is full of the usual violence, gunfights, shootouts and such like, but then there's a lot of humour in it too, mostly down to Milian and his group of amateur and not very good thieves. His character is the most complex, and although the humour stays there until the last frame, its Milian who goes on the greatest personal journey as he learns that teaching young guys to steal can sometimes have dire consequences.

Not that Stelvio Massi skimps on the violence though. Both Merenda and the guy who plays Belli gun down a fair few people, so every fan of the old Eurocrime genre should get something out of this one.

It seems that 1977 was a busy year for director Stelvio Massi, as he delivered no less than three Polizi flicks, and three very decent ones to boot! Fearless would be my pick of them, but it just slightly edges out this little film; which pits two of the genre's biggest stars against one another. Destruction Force stars pretty boy French actor Luc Merenda as a high ranking police officer, and possibly the greatest Italian actor of all time; Tomas Milian on the other side of the law. This type of film is not famous for it's deep and complex plot lines - there certainly is a reason for that - and this film helps to back up that reputation greatly, as not only does this film have a thin plot; it could be said that it doesn't really have any sort of plot at all, but this is more than made up for courtesy of a constant stream of entertainment that includes both laughs and violence. The film starts off with a shootout that leaves the Chief of Police dead. Newly promoted Detective Ghini resolves to track down the killer, and his search leads him to a restaurant owned by a criminal who runs a class coaching other criminals how to steal without using violence.

As with all of his films, the main standout in this one is definitely Tomas Milian. The great actor cuts a memorable figure in the antagonist role, and most of the reason for that is down to the fact that he's a million miles away from the common Polizi bad guy. He actually seems like quite a decent person in spite of being a criminal and it works well; although the director obviously felt there wasn't enough antagonism in the character as we also get a much nastier villain for our hero detective to track down. Luc Merenda once again puts in a fitting performance in the lead role and he is both good to watch and believable in the action sequences. There is plenty of action too, and it's clear that the director's only intention with this film was to entertain the audience, and the film certainly does do that. There's also a good dose of humour which works very well and doesn't feel out place either. The film on the whole is not brilliant or particularly intelligent, but this genre is never really meant to be; and Destruction Force more than makes up for its lack of substance in entertainment value anyway, and I'm confident that anyone who bothers to track this flick down will enjoy it.