Viva como um Policial, Morra como um Homem

This one really pushes the envelope on "ends justify the means" police tactics, even compared to the other Italian cop-thrillers I've seen. The two protagonists are cops who belong to an "anti-gang" squad...that means, in this case, that they actually act like gangsters. They're nihilistic, sexist a-holes. They like blowing things up for fun. They shoot criminals BEFORE they commit crimes. A gangster wants them out of the picture and has one of their colleagues shot; from there on, they actively engage in gang warfare. That's the plot.

The dialog is not at all clever. The premise is set up lazily and has no authenticity to it. The musical score is light-weight, typical 70's cop-thriller fare.

It's consistently entertaining, however. Whether laughing out loud or gasping in shock, I was never bored. There's plenty of eye-popping violence on a level with "Violent Naples" to satisfy fans in that department. The ending is very abrupt, surprising, and cool; it gives the whole rest of the movie a darker tone.

I definitely recommend it to fans of violent, Italian cop-thrillers from the 1970's, or any violent cop-thrillers from the 1970's, or good, trashy movies in general.

This is an interesting Italian crime thriller from notorious "Cannibal Holocaust" director Ruggiero Deodato in that it takes the usual fascist and sexist tendencies of the genre and exaggerates them to the point of ironic parody.

Ray Lovelock and Mark Porel play two rogue motorcycle cops who are more like criminals with badges. They endanger the public, they beat, torture, and shoot suspects, and the avail themselves of any woman they come across. But there is also a definite homosexual subtext between the two characters. Both are played by pretty-boy actors. They ride around on the same motorbike. At and one point, they have what is pretty close to three-way sex with the slutty sister of a gangster they are pursuing. The sister is played by "Fabiana Flavia", who is actually Sofia Dionisio, the younger, bustier sister of Silvia Dionisio, who was Deodato's wife at the time (So, yes, Deodato films a fairly graphic double sex scene with his own sister-in-law!). Silvia Dionisio also has a smaller part as a secretary, but it's a plum part for an actress in one of these macho films, first because she gets to keep her clothes on, and second, because she gets to banter with these two sexist pigs as they shamelessly hit on her (and her "liberated" character definitely gives as good as she gets).

There are some very disturbing moments of violence in this film, equaled only in the genre by Lucio Fulci's notorious "Contraband', Andrea Bianchi's "Cry of a Prostitute",and the grindhouse classic "Rico" (aka "Cauldron of Death"). These films generally vary greatly from intelligent noirish and morally ambiguous fare, where a lone cop or sympathetic criminal is forced to survive in an urban jungle, to trite, right-wing fantasies where a straight-arrow cop takes on mustache-twirling bad guys while his lilly-livered liberal superiors fume. This movie takes the latter path generally, but it exaggerates the vigilante cops so much it becomes a kind of reducto ad absurdum. It's not a great film perhaps, but it is certainly worth watching, especially if you are a fan of the genre.

Ruggero made every cops fantasy here.

Ray Lovelock and Marc Porel (RIP and WAY too young) play a couple of plods on an elite part of the squad. And you know what THAT means.

They cruise around on motorcycles basically clipping anyone who even gives them a fishy eye. Catch a guy trying to steal a purse? Beat him senseless. Then shoot him. The man to man violence was over OTT.

Then there's the sex. Of course they get to bed many loose women. The kind of loose women that seem to be all over Rome in these kind of flicks. Although that's the big city. Tokyo? The same.

And the chief is one of those "I see nothing" types. Until he has no choice.

Chase scenes, shootings, fistfights, 70's waka-waka guitar and haircuts, it's there ad infinitum.

Porel died too soon. He was good looking enough where he could have had a real career. Lovelock was doing his usual.

Hard to find, but if you do, it's worth a gander.

Can best be summed up as the "Spaghetti Starsky & Hutch" but with better car chases, more sex (and sexism) and more violence. Prime 1970s Poliziotteschi up there with the best of Franco Nero, Fabio Testi or Mauricio Merli

'Nuff said, but apparently not enough for an imdb review, so I will continue...

Ray Lovelock looks like another refugee Americano actor following the path most famously trodden by Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Lee van Cleef and his friend Tomas Milian, but in fact he was born in Italy of an Italian mother and English father. He is blond and plays the "Hutch" role.

Marc Porel was born in Switzerland, but his parents were both French actors. He is dark and plays the "Starsky" role.

Adolfo Celi plays the "Captain Dobey" role, his face will be familiar from numerous character parts in post war Hollywood and across European cinema, most notably as supervillain "Emilio Largo" in the James Bond classic "Thunderball"

Silvia Dionisio plays the feisty modern woman who cheerfully puts up with the lads crude sexist banter and gives as good as she gets in the repartee department

Sofia Dionisio gets her kit off.

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (they sure don't make films with awesome titles like this anymore) is a poliziotteschi directed by none other than Ruggero Deodato, the man who would deliver two of the most uncompromising, relentlessly mean-spirited exploitation movies ever in 1980, namely the still notorious Cannibal Holocaust and the depraved sleaze-fest House On the Edge Of the Park. Deodato was a man who never shied away from extremity in his movies and so it was with some interest I went into this one, particularly seeing as the Italian poliziotteschi genre is one hardly renowned for its restraint or political correctness in the first place. Well, I think it would be only fair to say that Deodato has once again delivered a tough genre film, full of excessive violence. Except in this case, and unlike those two infamous movies I mentioned before, the fun factor is considerably higher here as the levels of mean-spiritedness are noticeably lower.

Aside from Deodato at the helm, this one benefits enormously from having Fernando di Leo as its screenwriter. I think it would be fair to say that di Leo is the king of this particular sub-genre and has several outright classics under his belt as director. His input, therefore, is always going to be a significant bonus. It would probably be fair to say that the screenplay to this one is less thoughtful than the ones he used for his own films but it still nevertheless gets us from A to B in a highly entertaining fashion. This is one of many Italian cop films which followed the basic template laid down by the international hit Dirty Harry (1971), in that it features the use of brutal police tactics used to sort various low-life criminals out. Other Italian films used this idea, such as Umberto Lenzi's Violent Naples (1976) but where that film had one violent cop, this one has two! They go through the picture killing and torturing criminals, endangering the general public and indulging in sexist behaviour at every given opportunity. These guys work for the special squad section of the Rome police department and the film is basically made up of a number of different encounters they have with various criminals.

Events kick off with no messing about with a great extended motorcycle chase through the scenic streets of Rome, later the boys use their special brand of force against violent criminals holding an unfortunate woman hostage in her home, they also take out a group of thieves before they can even attempt to commit the crime in question and later dispatch a variety of gangsters in a quarry shootout. In other words, this is good violent fun, poliziotteschi style. The manner that these cops deliver their unorthodox brand of violent justice is so casually delivered and at no point in proceedings does anyone truly question their methods, aside from the occasional light ticking off from their superior. But let's be honest, it's this complete lack of any political correctness whatsoever that is a significant part of what makes Italian cop thrillers such fun nowadays – they don't make them like this anymore that's for sure! If you could imagine a parallel universe where 'Starsky and Hutch' were nihilistic police officers who blow up cars on purpose, have threesome sex with suspects and break the necks of criminals for the hell of it, then it would be something not far off Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man. You've just got to love the Italians.