Italia a mano armata

This 1976 Italian movie, which casts a great Maurizio Merli and the veteran John Saxon, is the third(and the last one)film of Commissario Betti's series, after Roma Violenta(also directed by Girolami) and Napoli Violenta(directed by Umberto Lenzi). It's really a terrific movie! The story is great, the soundtrack and the acting are outstanding and the action scenes are probably among the best shot ever, with a style very similar to Enzo G. Castellari's one(who is always synonym of quality). If you're big fans of Italian 70's poliziottesco, you have to watch this movie, which is one of the most representative and amazing ever shot! I suggest it to anybody!

It's all happening in this one, great opening theme music backed up by plenty of nasty 1970s action from the get go. Poor man's Franco Nero, bottle blond Maurizio Merli, has his hands full before the opening credits finish rolling, with not only a violent bank robbery but also a mass kidnapping of children on their way to school. Later there are a couple of the best car chases I've seen in a "Poliziotteschi" movie, as well as the obligatory rape scene, and a particularly graphic "dragged behind a car" execution. All this and a surprise ending thrown in for good measure, what more could you ask?

Third mission for Commissario Betti - gangster hunt in Turin and Milan with Maurizio Merli and John Saxon

After stints in Rome (Roma violenta, 1975) and Naples (Napoli violenta, 1976), the not-so-squeamish inspector was transferred (criminally) to the industrial city of Turin. And things get tough there too. Hijacking of a school bus with the subsequent taking of the children hostage, bank robbery with a false hostage, attempted rape of a random victim, death of a captured child, Betti offers herself as a hostage in exchange for freeing the other children, is thrown out of the car while driving at speed. There's a lot going on in Turin and the surrounding area! As a viewer, you hardly get to think. Behind all of these perfidities there is probably a tough businessman named Albertelli (John Saxon (1936-2020)), who promptly knows everything. An exposed police informant from Milan, who works for Commissario Arpino (Raymond Pellegrin), is brutally dragged to death. Turin and Milan? You can see that crime in Italy doesn't stop at the city limits ;-) After all, the original film is called "Italia a mano armata" and no longer just "Roma violenta" or "Napoli violenta" like in the first two Split. So it's all about it! It's a good thing that Inspector Betti didn't fall on his head even after falling on the motorway. So the clever fox was able to smuggle in his own man (Toni Ucci) as a driver for the nasty Albertelli. He even manages to fake a serious accident with the villain, so that Albertelli can be persuaded that he has to stay injured in the hospital. The astonished mafia boss promptly tells his chauffeur the meeting point with his cronies. A lot of things are going in the right direction for Betti. Privately, there are even signs of a happy ending for the tough detective with the charming sister (Mirella D'Angelo) of the boy who died in the kidnapping. But will someone like him ever find peace?

With this trilogy, Maurizio Merli (1940-1989) played his way into the front row of the extremely successful poliziottesco genre. However, unlike the better actor and GOLDEN GLOBE nominee Franco Nero, he remained too attached to this role in the future. In any case, Maurizio Merli takes no prisoners in his role. The type he played corresponded to the spirit of the times in a decade that - not only in Italy - was characterized by many upheavals and violent upheavals. The film contains one of the best car chases you could see in the cinema. It's better not to know anything specific about the exact circumstances of the shooting.

The famous GOLDEN GLOBE winner John Saxon plays very solidly as usual. You take both sides off him. As in "Cross Shot", which was filmed in beautiful Bari, he could have played the tough detective.

The Italians were second to none in virtually inventing new sub-genres by subverting to their own terms the conventions of classic Hollywood cinema; thus, after the Peplum (Epics), Gothic (Horror), Spaghetti (Westerns) and Giallo (Thriller), the 1970s ushered in the era of the Poliziotteschi which was basically an Italian version of DIRTY HARRY (1971) - although, to be fair to them, the seeds of the genre had been sown a few years earlier. Astonishingly there were practically innumerable similar movies made between 1966-80, a phenomenon which can easily be attributable to Italy's tumultuous political climate rife with corruption and kidnappings which marked the 1970s. Admittedly, I used to be very skeptical about the worthiness of these films (something which held true for the mainstream Italian film industry itself at the time) but having now gotten a fair share of them under my belt, I have to say that I've changed my stance somewhat.

This is the final entry - following VIOLENT ROME (1975) and VIOLENT NAPLES (1976) - in the "Commissario Betti" trilogy, with Maurizio Merli (the poor man's Franco Nero) gnashing his teeth throughout the film at untouchable "honest" businessman John Saxon; here, the hero even shares an unconvincing romance with the sister of a kidnapped child. While it certainly features plenty of action, ensuring an unrelenting pace and occasional excitement (though I would say that, ultimately, it provides one chase too many!), the film is nothing really special - the English title notwithstanding - and, worse, virtually interchangeable with any other of its ilk...apart from the unexpected downbeat ending which, apparently, was a deliberate act on the part of director Girolami (who here actually uses the pseudonym Franco Martinelli!) because he had been bypassed for the second installment; not having watched the first entry in the series, I can't comment on its quality but VIOLENT NAPLES - directed by the more highly-profiled Umberto Lenzi - is certainly superior to the third!!

In director Franco Martinelli's highly regarded crime classic, 'Italia a mano armata' aka 'Special Cop in Action' (1976), the super-svelte, bullet-dodging pugilist, Maurizio Merli reprises his most incendiary role as the maverick,majestically moustachioed, skin-tight shirt wearin', all fists blazin', zero tolerance, Commisario Betti, for yet another gonzoid, thrillingly non-PC eruptions of hard-boiled, Italian Poliziotteschi action! The craven, ill-dressed thugs foolhardy attempt to kidnap a group of school children on Commisario Betti's watch, bloodily unleashes a delirious deluge of exhilarating retribution from the inimitable, golden-haired paragon of righteous vengeance, whose mesmerizingly macho modus operandi of brutally annihilating balaclava bovver boys with his jubilant, jaw-smashing roundhouses, proves more than adequate when Betti finally confronts his arch nemesis, Albertini, energetically played with obvious gusto by fellow Euro-crime icon, John Saxon!

Maestro Martinell's exciting 70s actioner 'Special Cop in Action' is demonstratively one of the most appealingly hotheaded Euro crime epics, galvanized by a scintillating squall of thrilling, adrenalized action set pieces, the Berretta blasting mayhem made all the more deliriously entertaining by bravura composer, Franco Micalizzi's gritty, funkier-than-thou, street-tough, heart-poundingly groovy score! This is dynamic crime funk par excellence, adding considerable elan to an already essential Italian cult classic! If for some wholly obscure reason you only watch one high octane, head-knockingly heroic Maurizio Merli poliziottesco, I have little doubt that witnessing the pulse-wreaking whirlwind of unbridled bellicosity fuelling 'Special Cop in Action' will make you a hardcore Merli maniac for life!