L'avvertimento

Another complex, serious crime drama from Damiano Damiani here, with an ultra-complex plot full of characters whose motivations you're not entirely sure of.

Cop Gemma wakes up one day to find 100,000,000 lire has been deposited into his bank account without explanation. He also receives a phone call from a mysterious person who hopes he'll spend it well and conduct himself expertly in an upcoming investigation. Confused, Gemma goes to work, only to find his boss is setting up a high-level prosecution and he's also received a mysterious bribe.

Nevertheless, the boss is going to bring in a dodgy mafia accountant to see if he will spills the beans. Not a good idea, as about two seconds after this man is escorted into the building, his escorts turn out to be hit men who kill the accountant, the boss, and another two cops. Gemma should have been there, but after receiving yet another strange phone, he had decided to quit. One dead boss later, that resignation letter gets torn up and Gemma goes on the rampage!

Wait - this is a Damiano Damiani film, so he doesn't go on the rampage at all. He starts investigating a world where he can't trust anyone but needs to work with everyone, including DA Martin Balsam, whom Gemma suspects of working for the bad guys, and the boss guy's widow, whom Gemma suspects of working for the bad guys, and the sleazy journalist, whom Gemma suspects of working for the bad guys. But who are the bad guys? Those dodgy looking businessmen with their suits and their champagne - those are the bad guys!

If you seen any Damiani film, you'll know that he's not Mr Action but Mr Plot, as The Warning doesn't skimp on that. In fact, there's so much plot I wasn't even sure who was working for who or why people where doing what they did. They do try and put in as much exposition as possible, but I was losing the thread on what was happening when just about every character turned up at a wedding at the end. There is some grim violence on display, but this is a head-movie, not a moustache movie.

There are a few criticisms mind you - although Gemma and Laura Trotter are pretty good, I was expecting more from Martin Balsam after he blew me away in Blood and Diamonds and Confessions of a Really Long Film Title. I wasn't totally satisfied with the ending either, but I'm guessing by 1980 they couldn't throw in the old 'maverick cop getting shot in a drive-by shooting' as they'd done that to death by this point.

Damiani's next film would be the sequel to The Amityville House!

If you know the director, you'll probably get that this movie is absolutely not a Polizzotesco, as they were galore in the seventies, bloody, macho seventies for the Italian film industry, full of car chases, tortures, beatings of all kinds on people, including - and I would say : especially - women. This is a plot topic, about corruption, political involvment with the underworld, a Damiano Damiani, Pasquale Squietteri or Francesco Rosi trade mark. Daring, no gratuitous, complex, requiring much attention, not destined at all to saturday evening more or less already drunk audiences of men, alone or together in the movie theaters. Destined on the contrary to cerebral folks, maybe not intellectual. Damiani was the director of Mafia - genuine, real mafia - movies, so accurate that I will always be surprised that Damiano Damiani died in his bed, and at an advanced age, and not earlier in his life, by a "accident" for instance, or because of a bomb under his car, hit by a hit and run driver or shot on the street by a motorcycle passenger.

This is a serious and reflexive movie about corruption in the Italian police and the influence of politics in the realm of the organized crime. Gemma and Balsan made a good pair and the story is very plausible, really down into the reality. Maybe the screenplay could be a little less complicated and Damiani's directional pace just a little less frantic because, sometimes, the viewer feels lost. But that's a good entry and really worth a look. I give a six(6) to this one.