No il caso è felicemente risolto

In the murderous midst of confrontationally bloody, bullet-shredded milieu of the Poliziotteschi's cathartically violent heyday, assured film-maker Vittorio 'Savage Three' Salerno helms one of the Gung ho genre's more overtly damning, aggressively political works in his slipknot taut thriller 'No, The Case is Happily Resolved' wherein blameless, if somewhat aimless proletariat Fabio Santamaria whilst on one of his frequent fishing excursions, disbelievingly observes the uncomfortably frenzied bludgeoning of a terrified young woman by one of 'polite' societies finest, the highly regarded scholar Ranieri (Riccardo Cucciolla), suddenly riven in disorientating panic, the massively distraught Fabio, acting in a moment of grievous ill judgement, he fails to immediately report the heinous crime, thereby inadvertently allowing the coldly Machiavellian, middle-class assassin to effectively manipulate the desperate situation to his favour, his lofty position of immense privilege, ostensibly being a 'person of merit', one of the vaunted financial and hierarchical elite, he is thusly able to generously weigh the mutable scales of justice to his benefit, the iniquities of the class system callously corrupted to actively work against the entirely innocent, increasingly paranoid Fabio! Salerno's excitingly plotted, Kafkaesque crime thriller has a palpably nightmarish quality, strongly redolent of master film-maker Damiano Damiani's equally enervating 'I am Afraid' (1978). With its excruciatingly maintained tension, breathlessly circuitous narrative, this exemplary Euro-crime classic has lost none of its vitriol, and with the process of law no less corrupt, Vittorio Salerno's remarkably deep, immaculately acted, sinuously directed, flint-edged masterpiece remains sadly entirely relevant today, and this pristine Blu-ray restoration is an absolute revelation, and a demonstrative must-see for avid Euro-cult enthusiasts and casual crime film fans alike, and, once again, maestro Riz Ortolani creates another sublime score.

The best thing about this movie would have to be its title. I find the bluntness of "No, The Case is Happily Resolved" oddly funny, so maybe was expecting something a little zanier than what I got with the actual film. Truth be told, it's pretty serious, and apart from a couple of shot sequences here and there, it really couldn't be called action-packed.

At the end of the day, it does the very Hitchcock "man charged with a crime he didn't do" premise quite well, and I found it to be decently engaging for most of its runtime (few non-Hitchcock films have done it as well as the miniseries "The Night Of," though).

Acting and pacing are both solid, but it's probably the music that ends up doing a surprising amount of the heavy-lifting - the score was really well done.

An man witnesses a murder. The murderer himself sees him and chases after him, but he manages to shake the assassin off and get home. What ensues is a psychological tug-of-war between the eyewitness and the killer.

Riccardo Cucciolla plays a reputable, yet troubled professor who commits a heinous and wanton murder, killing a young prostitute. Enzo Cerusico is a low level clerk, married with a child, who's not strong-willed enough to inform the police right away about the killing.

He then gets caught in a web of lies... will he be able to get out of it? A curious, experienced journalist, portrayed by Enrico Maria Salerno, chimes in to shed some light.

That's an unsung gem of Italian Seventies. The film is shot in such a way that holds you glued to the screen till the end.

A classic 'italian story', in which an innocent and ignorant worker (witness to a crime) pays in the place of the real guilty, a high society professor. Besides the not so original topic the movie offers good acting performances and depicts perfectly the life of a low-class worker living in the suburbs of an italian city in the mid-70's.

Very good, obscure and underrated movie with three excellent male leads. Enzo Cerusico was prolific and began as a child actor in the 50s plays the poor guy caught up in this violent murder case, Riccardo Cucciolla plays the villainous professor and was in loads including Bava's Rabid Dogs and Melville's Un Flic. Meanwhile the colourful journalist, not too keen on the police line of investigation, is played by Enrico Maria Salerno, elder brother of the director and had most varied career including playing the Inspector in Bird With Crystal Plumage.

Movie begins with graphic sex killing in a cornfield and the witness becomes the suspect as a very well told tale takes us around the streets of Rome and surrounding countryside as a most believable story unfolds and a working class lad seems likely to take the rap instead of the society man. How very Italian.