Il cinico, l'infame, il violento

'The Cynic, The Rat & The Fist' boisterously remains a most genial Lenzi-helmed poliziottesco classic, starring the appealingly familiar Teflon-tough triumvirate of Merli, Milian and Saxon; replete with so much scene chewing testosterone, it's a miracle that any celluloid remained for the final print!!! Sinful Saxon plays the boorish crim, Frank Di Maggio with charismatic muscularity, and there really can be only one avenging, fists-first, triumphantly thug-baiting copper up to the titanic task of carving a crimson swathe of retrograde justice through the ubiquitously iniquitous backstreets of Rome, and that man is the icon of hep-cat Poliziotteschi cool; an uber bellicose, bullet-blasting geezer with a majestic moustache fashioned out of living granite; give it up for, Maurizio Merli!!! The protean arch nemesis to sordid skeezers, blood-thirsty blaggers, and pernicious pimps, be they vertical inebriate, or horizontal degenerate; you foolhardily cross that intractable line on murderously macho Merli's gimlet-eyed watch and you're going home in a gore-spattered, snug-fitting zip lock tuxedo! The swarthy Saxon fatally bites off more than he can chew, and ends up choking on the fist-sized, jaw-breaking, righteously roundhouse-rocking might of Maurizio Merli!

While 'The Cynic, The Rat & The Fist' isn't the greatest Merli/Lenzi pairing, it's pretty damn close, and that can only mean one thing, my Eurocrime-loving compadres, an exhilaratingly intense example of J&B-fuelled, ferociously Fiat-fragging Italian action!

Good poliziottesco flick

Maurizio Merli plays a tough, Chuck Norris lookalike ex-cop on the case to bring crime bosses to justice (AKA: to kill them). It's fun. There's a lot to like here. Chase scenes. Fight scenes. Heist scenes. The acting is pretty average. All in all, it's worth a watch if you're a fan of this kind of film!

With "The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist", Umberto Lenzi proved once more what he had already proven numerous times before, namely that he was Italy's greatest and hardest-working crime-movie director! Even during the second half of the 70s decade, when the heydays of the Poliziotesschi were actually over already, Lenzi still made a handful of downright awesome genre classics. "The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist" is even one of the best Poliziotesschi ever, with a very eventful but nevertheless solid script, no less than three of the finest contemporary lead actors and a truckload of impressively staged action footage. The title, and quite many of the themes as well, are obvious (and sublime) references towards Sergio Leone's landmark western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". However, in Leone's film, it was unmistakably clear who was who, whereas here the three main protagonists are never referred to with one of the aliases/nicknames of the title and it's not all that obvious to guess, neither! I presume Maurizio Merli - Tanzi the good guy - is "the Fist", since he's battling the organized crime in Rome with his bare vigilante hands now that he quit the police. I also daresay John Saxon's character Di Maggio is "the Rat", since his filthy mafia activities infest the entire city like a disease. And finally, Tomas Milian - in a truly superb performance - is probably "the Cynic" because, well, he's one of the cruelest and most relentless villains to ever appear on screen (just look at the hospital execution sequences for evidence).

Great movie, ditto soundtrack and particularly the sequences that feature Tomas Milian and John Saxon together rank as some of the most powerful ones in Italian cult cinema history!

This is one of the better poliziotteschi I've seen - written by Lenzi with two other Euro-Cult stalwarts, Ernesto Gastaldi and Dardano Sacchetti - and also, perhaps, the quintessential Maurizio Merli film (not that this, in itself, is a guarantee of quality!).

From the title, one presumes that this was intended to be THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) of crime films - although, here, the shifty alliance is made between two baddies (Tomas Milian - dubbed "The Chinaman", for some reason a favorite nickname in films from this subgenre! - and John Saxon). Again, having just watched COP IN BLUE JEANS (1976) the previous day, I couldn't help noticing just how many of these films open with a robbery sequence; likewise, the leading man's girlfriend generally emanates from the wrong side of the tracks and is victimized for aiding our hero during the course of the film!

As is to be expected, the film's pace never lets up by providing a steady quota of highly proficient action scenes - culminating in a heist committed at one of Saxon's offices by Milian's thugs(!) and which also involves Merli and "The Professor", an elderly pint-sized expert in gadgetry, in the elaborate diffusion of the building's security system. Still, characterization is not entirely neglected: Merli is obsessed with catching Milian (even if the two only come face to face at the climax) and, feigning his own death, works undercover to this end but remains in contact with his chief; Milian is a small- time hood with ambitions of taking over the territory of American mobster Saxon; the latter, then, is the typical gangster - wealthy, ruthless (with a penchant for leaving traitors at the mercy of his enormous hounds!) and apparently omnipotent. The scenes in which the villainous duo clash - each with his own agenda which sees no place in the scheme of things for the other! - constitute some of the film's highlights; Franco Micalizzi's score is also notable.

Even if the film's in no way a spoof as COP IN BLUE JEANS had been, its script features a comparable surfeit of hard-boiled dialogue which is so over-the-top as to be quite funny - extending even to the notes of condolences passed on amongst the criminals as a means of heralding someone's death sentence!

With great works in a variety of genres, such as Gialli, Poliziotteschi and Cannibal Flicks, Umberto Lenzi is doubtlessly one of the most productive and versatile directors in Italian Exploitation/Cult-Cinema. And, along with Fernando Di Leo, he is arguably the ultimate master of the Italian crime-genre. Though maybe just not quite as great (and neither quite as brutal and uncompromising) as its predecessor "Roma A Mano Armata" ("Rome Armed To The Teeth", 1976) or the masterpiece "Milano Odia: La Polizia Non Può Sparare" ("Almost Human", 1974), "Il Cinico, L'Infame, Il Violento" aka. "The Cynic, The Rat And The Fist" of 1977 is yet another gritty and great Poliziottesco by Lenzi.

Its title doubtlessly being derived from Sergio Leone's 1966 masterpiece "Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo" (better known as "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", and arguably the greatest Western ever made), "The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist" stars three iconic actors in Italian genre-cinema, Maurizio Merli, Tomas Milian and John Saxon. This is a sequel to Lenzi's own "Roma A Mano Armata", in which Maurizio Merli reprises his role of the super-tough and uncompromising Inspector Leonardo Tanzi. Tanzi is a supremely bad-ass, unorthodox Rome cop who hates criminals as he hates crime and whose methods make Dirty Harry seem tame in comparison. Tomas Milian is back with greatness, in a different villain-role than that he played in the predecessor. Leonardo Tanzi, who has retired from the police in this one and yet keeps chasing down (and beating up) criminals is targeted by Luigi 'Er Cinese' Maietto ("Tomas Milian") a brutal and unscrupulous criminal whom he helped bring to justice and who has just been released from prison. After an attempt on his life, Tanzi fakes his own death, which gives him the opportunity to secretly carry on with his investigations. 'Er Cinese', in the meantime, has founded an alliance with the Italian-American mob boss Frank Di Maggio (John Saxon), a man who likes to feed enemies to his dogs...

It isn't explained which titular attribute refers to whom of the characters. Even so, Merli is doubtlessly 'the Fist' ('Il Violento'), and it's safe to assume that Milian is 'the Cynic', which would make Saxon 'The Rat' ('L'infame'/the infamous). All three leading men are great as always. Merli is great in his typical leading role of the unorthodox and super-tough copper and John Saxon shines as the slick Mafia Don; however, one might still say that the number one performance in this film comes from Tomas Milian, who is once again downright brilliant in the role of another cynical and sadistic thug. The supporting cast includes many regulars of Italian genre-cinema, such as Guido Alberti or Bruno Corazzari. The film is action-packed, full of violent shootouts, chases and sequences of genre-typical brutality. As Lenzi's other Poliziotteschi, the film is accompanied by a great score, this one being composed by Franco Micalizzi, who also did the scores for "Roma A Mano Armata" and "Napoli Violenta". Even this does not quite reach the level of "Milano Odia" and "Roma A Mano Armata", in my opinion, it is still a gritty, violent, immensely entertaining and simply great Crime offering by Umberto Lenzi, carried by loads of action, three sublime leading men and Lenzi's magnificent direction. Not to be missed by lovers of cinematic bad-assery!