À couteau tiré

Vicious and ingenious Italian policier featuring Harvey Keitel as O'Connor, an almost impossibly surly New York detective on the take, who smokes fine cigars while basking in his one prized possession--a Central Park West apartment paid for with drug dealers' money. In what must be a comment on O'Connor's tunnel vision, the apartment is almost totally unfurnished--it's as if O'Connor blew his whole wad on the place, and had none left over to make it liveable. Narcotics-division cops are getting slaughtered by a serial killer, and one day a scrofulous, pouty British geek (John Lydon--that's Johnny Rotten to you) shows up at the illicit apartment, confessing to the crimes. O'Connor is sure Leo the Brit isn't the cop killer--but the kid has seen his illegal crash pad, so now what?



The director Roberto Faenza has made what is surely the most explicit movie ever about the homoerotic subtext of the policier genre. The first two thirds are a fiendishly crafty minuet of sudden reversals; the last is a sadomasochistic folie a deux that's closer to Pinter or Genet than Don Siegel. Lydon is shockingly effective as the pettish punk (he ought to have a cat to stroke); Harvey Keitel seems Harveyish for a while, until you start noticing his hundred strokes of physical inventiveness. A Scotch glass smashed to bits shocks O'Connor with his own unconscious fury; a pair of chopsticks O'Connor doesn't know how to use turn into Saharan spears crudely crucifying a spicy tuna roll. Sizing up the averages, Keitel has the coolest resume of any contemporary actors--and O'Connor goes up in that gallery of scream-like-a-moose Harvey angst right next to Matthew the Pimp, the shylock-pianist from FINGERS, and that very bad Lieutenant.

This is a great subtext movie. There's the surface thriller elements and then there's Harvey Keitel's rough-play with John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten. The pair play out the master/slave dynamic with nasty commitment. Its not merely S&M however, its positively psychopathic in a nasty but sickly playful sense. Its a dark little vision of police power abused and quite probably all too real for some viewers and protestors out there who realise the strong arm of the law isn't disembodied from the bodies of individual policeman despite political rhetoric to the contrary. But hey, this isn't all that serious a movie. Keitel is great, Lydon is a vicious victim and it all goes by relatively quickly. John Lydon is worth the price of admission/rental/purchase alone. Enjoyably twisted.

The acting is very good in this study of police corruption. It stars Harvey Keitel as a bad cop who has taken a great deal of money, and, with a partner, purchased a condo. When the relationship gets strained and the other guy wants out, Keitel becomes a bit paranoid, knowing that such a move could expose them to authorities. Meanwhile, there have been a series of cop killings in the city. Keitel finds himself being stalked by a young man, played by Sex Pistol, Johnny Rotten (Lydon). He has something up his sleeve, although he spends much of his time in a bathtub, wearing almost nothing, handcuffed. The former partner becomes a problems and an act takes place where there is no returning to normalcy. The young man continues to be tortured, but, at the same time, seems to be in control of things. He becomes almost wifely in a way. He pushes Keitel's tortured conscience to the very edge. The acting is very good, especially Lydon. The scenes are really brutal. It's a movie that makes you want to wash afterward. Still, it's pretty captivating and well done.

Corrupt (1983) was a very good film. The movie is about a pair of corrupt cops (Harvey Keitel is one of them) who spend their illegal dough on an uptown New York City flat. It's unfurnished because they didn't have anymore money to put furniture in it. John Lydon stars as a very disturbed youngster who plays a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse with Harvey. He convinces him that he's the notorious cop killer that has been hunting police officers. Harvey kidnaps him and makes him his permanent guest inside his apartment. Is John the corrupt cop killer? Can Harvey get to the bottom of this twisted case before or will he get caught up in some twisted and sick mind games? To find out you'll have to get Corrupt!

A rarely seen film that is in the hands of the public. Since their is no true owner of this movie, scores of terrible copies are floating around the market place. The only legitimate copy of this film I have seen was the mid-eighties release from Thorn-E.M.I. The true title is Corrupt, any other copy is a crappy transfer (Cop Killer) and their has been no official D.V.D. release either. Any copy on this format is nearly unwatchable and horribly edited. Try and find the old eighties copy on Thorn/E.M.I. Stay away from others.

Highly recommended.

P.S. John Lydon's pop group Public Image Limited was supposed to score the soundtrack for this film. He even worked on the soundtrack with his band mate Keith Levene and Martin Atkins over the phone (long distance). The original title of the film was to be The Order of Death. The unused music appears on the semi-official release "You are Now Entering A Commerical Zone" album. Harvel Keitel plays an early proto-type of his future "Bad Lieutenant" character in this film.

Roberto Faenza's stark, downbeat 'Cop Killer' (aka) 'Order of Death' (1983) is a paranoid, palpably grimy,intermitently intense NYC-set poliziotteschi with the singularly arresting concept of pairing muscular method-man, Harvey Keitel's brooding Lt. Fred O'Connor, against the preternaturally angsty ex-Pistol, John Lydon, whose blithely bilious, Pil-popping persona is put to lurid good use as the manipulative, morally bankrupt psycho killer, Leo Smith. With shocking bursts of violence, and fevered flourishes of Mamet-like intensity, the misanthropic, 'Order of Death' has more refined cinematic qualities than its current bargain-bin obscurity suggests!

This claustrophobic, enjoyably skewed celluloid oddity is enlivened by maestro, Ennio Morricone's beautiful theme, and the increasingly tormented, Keitel makes for a memorably vexed, psychologically complex cop. While Faenza's jittery psychodrama is flawed, the gritty film's incendiary dynamics are undiminished,'Cop Killer' remains a darkly compelling entry in the by-then waning poliziotteschi movie cycle; and the sweaty, antagonistic interrogation sequences between, Keitel and Lydon still make for compulsive viewing! With modest expectations, Roberto Faenza's dingily exciting 'Cat & Louse' thriller is unlikely to disappoint, and should rate higher with the more obsessive Euro-crime, midnight movie addicts!