Verdammte, heilige Stadt

This is cheap and nasty film making at its best/worst. Sensational, kamikaziesque car chase sequences featuring Fiat 500s are the highlight of this marvelous time capsule from a raunchier, less precious era. Rome in the mid-70s looks grungy, edgy, poor and downbeat -- the perfect backdrop for this "Spaghetti Noir" homage to Eastwood's Inspector Callahan. The Foley-guy goes crazy during laughably excessive fight sequences, each blow delivered with an sickeningly unreal aural crunch. All manner of brutality is explored without shame or pity; no victim is too vulnerable - from aging female bystanders, to the wheelchair-bound. The acting is by turns wooden and hysterical, the extras either homicidal maniacs or their hapless victims. But the real highlights are the car chases, "exhilarating" doesn't do it justice. "Suicidal" comes close. Then again, having lived here for the past couple of years, it could be just another day in Roma traffic.

I think my fellow reviewers are overstating things a bit. Roma Violenta is by no means a bad movie, but it does nothing any number of poliziotteschi films can't do better and it doesn't impress with what it does either.

Maurizio Merli plays another inspector, this time Commisarrio Betti. There's a healthy number of car chases, fistfights, gundowns and just about anything you would expect from a film of this kind, but it's all done with such a workmanlike air from Marino Girolami (Castellari's father) that I couldn't help but glance at my watch every now and then. Girolami does Roma Violenta with the get-it-over-with attitude of a professional instead of the enthusiasm of a fan. Get in, take the master shot, take the close-ups, get it over with cos there's a paycheck in the end. No imagination whatsoever. I can imagine him on set crossing things off a list: "Car chase? Check. Fistfight? Check".

Polizioto fans that need their fix will be satisfied by Roma Violenta, but if you haven't seen true genre classics like The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist, Almost Human or La Mala Ordina, then Roma Violenta can wait.

Forgive me the immoral and perhaps even inappropriate comparison, but watching a good Poliziotteschi movie from the '70s is like taking the best drug that exists! It's the sensation of one and a half hour adrenalin rushing, all your body's blood getting pumped to the heart at high speed and a delirium in your brains! When I watch a Poliziotteschi flick, and if it's a good one, I always feel revitalized and ablaze afterwards. "Roma Violenta" certainly isn't the greatest movie of its kind, and nearly not even the best Maurizio Merli movie, but even the slightly-less-than-stellar Poliziotteschi efforts are absolute must-sees for cult fanatics and so is this one! "Roma Violenta" is the first entry in a trilogy revolving on protagonist Commissioner Betti. But don't pay too much attention to the chronological order and details of these three separate movies. Personally I watched the first film last it didn't matter one bit. Betti is the only recurring character in the series, but furthermore there is no continuity whatsoever and some actors (like John Saxon and Luciano Rossi) even depict different characters in two different movies. Commissioner Betti is a tough and unorthodox cop in Rome. His heart bleeds as he witnesses how the city streets are infested with criminals and particularly how they always become more violent and relentless due to weak legislations and cunning lawyers. There are pointless assassinations on public buses, bloody bank robberies, supermarket heists, vicious rapes, unhappily ending hostage takings and even police officer annihilation. Betti's pursuing methods are efficient but very borderline, and he regularly comes into conflict with his superiors. When Betti shoots a bank robber in cold blood, after a bloody wild car chase with several casualties including his young partner, he finally loses his cop badge. He isn't unemployed for long, though, as he joins an elite vigilante squad where he can carelessly beat nasty villains' faces to pulp! Hooray! Admittedly the plots of nearly all Poliziotteschi movies are always the same, and you always know they'll feature mandatory car chases, gratuitous nudity and shocking images of innocent people (like nice old ladies or teenagers) getting slaughtered. But the vile truth is that you simply cannot wait to see it happen! Once again the highlight here is a virulent chase, with plenty of awesome Fiat and Simca cars going in severe overdrive, and a few deaths that are almost too brutal to describe (that poor hostage!). "Roma Violenta" doesn't feature such a good soundtrack as usually the case, but acting performances are truly top-notch this time. Maurizio "moustache" Merli is terrific, of course, but there are also great supportive performances from Ricard Conte, Ray Lovelock and John Steiner.

A crippled guy in a wheelchair getting beaten by two jerks. Three schoolchildren gunned down in front of some nuns. Massimo Vanni hoofing Luciano Rossi in the nuts over and over again. Welcome to Violent Rome, where the moustaches are thick, the cars as brittle as poppadoms, and the general public certainly doomed.

Rome in 1975 is a filthy hovel full of bagsnatchers, conmen, bank robbers, hustlers, pickpockets, rapists, psychopaths, murderers and bawbags running riot while cop Maurizio watches in horror, almost helpless as there's only so many criminals one man can either shoot or punch in the jaw. He does have some help, however, in the form of undercover cop Ray Lovelock. And some guy who dresses up as an old lady to catch bagsnatchers, but don't get hung up on that as it has nothing to do with the rest of the film.

When Maurizio pops a cap in a particularly violent criminals ass, he ends up quitting his job as a violent policeman and starts working as a violent vigilante instead, which makes him even more violent and rage-filled. In fact, this film has so much violence, car chases, and member of the public killing that it leaves almost no time to have any kind of plot at all. Not that I was caring!

Out of the cast of regulars who keep showing up in these sorts of films for the next decade, John Steiner stands out the most as an evil bank robber who'll shoot anyone in his way. He always makes a great bad guy, and he's backed up by rapist Luciano Rossi and violent vigilante Massimo Vanni too. Richard Conte is a good guy in this one, and sadly, this is also his last film, as he died of a heart attack in 1975.

Completely lacking in style, good acting, or plausibility, Violent Rome makes an ideal addition to your collection as it's full of all the other stuff you want in a film called Violent Rome.

In autumn 1974, High Crime was a monster hit for the Italian movie industry, but neither superstar Franco Nero nor director Enzo G. Castellari were available for a follow-up cash-in. So the producer of Roma Violenta rang up Maurizio Merli, who had already impersonated Nero in the Jack London rip-off White Fang to the Rescue, and teamed him up with Castellari's papa (!) Marino Girolami. The first part of the Commissario Betti trilogy, a fierce and ferocious vigilante opera, has the rawest, most unleashed feel of the remorseless triptych – followed by the bigger budgeted, slicker and more generic Napoli Violenta and the utterly bleak Italia a Mano Armata – and delivers all the nasty way to hell, culminating quite early in a high class car chase involving an Alfa Romeo Giulia Super 1600 and a BMW 1800. Despite the loose, vignette-esque script by Vincenzo Mannino, Roma Violenta is spot-on throughout, with Merli – who actually considered himself superior to Nero – doing his Italian job with a somber, easy-to-underestimate bravura that serves as the single anchor in the widening gyre of the inferno. Sure, that's crypto-fascist dirt, a shame for a country that got rid of the Duce only three decades before, the most successful poliziottesco ever, and a tightly entertaining affair summarized best in the timeless words of N.Y. punk rockers Ed Gein's Car: "I've got five dollars for each of you/ And a bullet in the back/ Boo f*ckin' hoo."