Opération K

A better than average Italian crime thriller for two reasons: firstly the story happens during one day, which creates dramatic tension, and secondly there aren't too many characters to follow.

Also the motivations for the protagonists are carefully construed from social and psychological issues such as poverty and masculinity.

Apart from all this the film still delivers on the level usually expected from Italian seventies genre films: lots of unnecessary violence, often sexual, and nudity too.

Recommended for fans of the genre. Released on video in Finland in the early eighties.

At first I was all ready to hate this film because it starts out with two nihilistic Roman youths getting all arsey about life and taking it out on everyone in a barrage of rape and murder, but then it kind of drops all that and becomes a hostage drama, redeeming itself in the process. Kind of.

Paolo is the strong, fearless part of the duo who control the unstable Giovanni. They both meet at a boring party where Giovanni has just failed to get a woody with his girlfriend and Paolo has been turfed out for trying to bed the house-owner's daughter. For some reason they get it into their heads that they aren't taking any crap from anyone any more, and start off proving how brave they are by house-invading Giovanni's girlfriend's house, raping her (off-screen thankfully), and accidentally killing her neighbour.

Once they find that they are wanted men, Giovanni wants to bail on the whole deal but Paolo talks him into one last heist in order to get cash to escape abroad. None of that makes much sense but judging by the way Giovanni starts hopping about like a kangaroo I'm guessing neither of them are particularly smart The two of them then assault a couple of hippies (in 1977? What's going on there?), get some guns, and finally get to a restaurant where they hold everyone hostage and demand a ransom.

From here on in it's Dog Day Afternoon, Italian style as we get to meet the various hostages, including a young lady who shows no fear whatsoever with the two robbers whatsoever, a young man who might regretting being too brave, and a pregnant Ely Galleani. Various drama unfolds while the police try and negotiate with the two youngsters.

Some people like it, some people don't. I'm in the middle. I like more action in my films and less woman threatening. I suppose it was saying something about something, but...etc.

Luigi Pertini dynamically directs one of the more startlingly savage, profoundly exhilarating entries in the lovably lurid, thug-packed idiom of 70s Euro-crime. Two hapless, hate-filled thugs meet at a particularly square shindig and spontaneously decide to wreak bloody havoc upon middle-class society with a zesty, drunken orgy of rape, feral fisticuffs, and all murderous manner of deliriously misguided misanthropy! 'Operazione Kappa: sparate a vista' aka 'Day of Violence' (1977) really is must see for ardent lovers of gonzoid Italo-sleaze; as brutalist moustache-maverick cops and nihilistic Ne'er-do-well misfits boisterously butt hirsute heads in this unrelentingly violent, intensely satisfying thick-ear Poliziottesco classic!

All this righteously unhinged B-Movie bellicosity is galvanized most groovily by a grimy, Lalo Schifrinoid crime-funk soundtrack by maestros, Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera that will demonstratively leave no booty unmoved! Pertini's exciting 'Day of Violence' is bloody marvellously misanthropic affair, onus on the plentiful claret that director, Luigi Pertini generously splashes all over the hijacked bistro walls! This still remains one of my personal Poliziotteschi favourites, due to the muscular filmmaking by able director, Luigi Pertini, the fabulously infectious grooves by, Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera, and fascinatingly full-blooded, tibia-trashing thuggery from our two particularly venomous and amoral leads. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more satisfyingly sadistic, cranium-cracking heft of cathartic, 'kick-the-bourgeois-in-the-knackers' Bistro blasting mayhem than 'Operazione Kappa: sparate a vista', which remains a vital example of Italian exploitation genius, and a painful reminder of just how dull, derivative and truly insipid contemporary agitprop cinema has become!

Once you get hooked to the Poliziotteschi genre - like I am - there are literally heaps of obscure titles to discover, but in all honesty and fairness a lot of them only contain two or three great sequences while the rest of the film is dull and disappointing. Not coincidentally, the vast majority of these obscure and disappointing movies are written and directed by unknown Italians. If you want guaranteed euro-crime top quality material, you better stick to the works of guys like Umberto Lenzi, Fernando Di Leo, Stelvio Massi, Enzo G. Castellari and perhaps two or three others. The writer/director of this "Day of Violence" is named Luigi Petrini and he clearly isn't one of the more successful names in the industry. The screenplay contains a handful of bright ideas and the film features a few interesting highlights, but most of the running time I was bored and too easily distracted. The good aspects include that the themes of Petrini's script effectively criticize the contemporary Italian political & social circumstances (desperate youth, unemployment, economic recession and revolt against the upper class…) and that the events of the entire film take place during one and the same day. Two twenty-something and sexually frustrated blokes meet each other outside a private party. One got kicked out just before he could have sex with the daughter of the house and the other one couldn't perform when he had the chance. Driven by anger and drugs, they decide to go the girl's apartment and "finish what they started". They rape the poor girl but also murder their neighbor and descend further into madness. The next brilliant decision they make is to invade a fancy restaurant and take all customers hostage at gunpoint. From then onward, you'd expect "Day of Violence" to turn into a blatant imitation of "Dog Day Afternoon" but it doesn't really. The Al Pacino classic was a harsh parody about the influence of the media, but here the action primarily remains indoors and reverts to dreadful clichés like Stockholm Syndrome etc. There's a lot of talking but very little action and even less violence. The acting performances are mundane and the sleaze is unpleasant, but the good news is that the soundtrack is exhilarating and the climax is short 'n' sweet!

Day of Violence is a little bit different from the usual Polizi flick; and if it wasn't for the fact that Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Dog Day Afternoon was released two years earlier; I might say that this film was quite original. Still, in spite of being another Italian rip-off - this film is not bad at all. The film takes the basic idea of two men holding a bunch of people hostage and gives it a much more exploitative theme and the film does have a 'Last House on the Left' vibe running throughout which ensures that the atmosphere is always nasty and overbearing. The plot focuses on two men who decide to rape a woman. Not long after the rape, the cops are out looking for them and they decide that the only way they can get out of the mess they are in is to go to a high class restaurant and take the customers hostage. So, they set out and buy a couple of guns and walk into the restaurant before announcing that nobody is to leave! The cops soon turn up on the scene and we watch the action from the inside as the criminals interact with the hostages.

The main point of Dog Day Afternoon was to show how a media circus can be created. This film doesn't follow that point or any other really, although there is some reference to the lack of jobs going in Italy at the time. Day of Violence is an extremely rare film and hasn't got itself the fan base of some of the Italian rip-offs of more popular films, which is a bit of a shame as this film is likely to please many genre fans. Day of Violence was obviously shot on a budget and the production values are not particularly impressive; although the film is actually fairly well directed and while nobody in the cast will win any awards; the ensemble of performances comes off quite well also. The film adheres to the template set out by Dog Day Afternoon fairly closely and the only real difference between the two is that this film is a bit nastier. There's not a great deal of violence in the film, which is a bit disappointing considering the title and the rest of the genre that it comes from and that is a bit of a failing point for the film. Still, if you can find a copy of this one; it's well worth a look!