Calibre magnum pour l'inspecteur

Well not exactly ... but let's just agree that there are a lot of shootouts here. Oh how I've missed those noises guns used to make back in the day ... it's always a nice throwback. And you also get quite the gritty characters with morals all over the place.

Now if that is something you can subscribe to ... go ahead and watch this. Just be sure to not feel offended by the violence and the sexism at display here. Different times and all that. I have issues with certain depictions myself, but still can black most of them out and enjoy this as exploitation as it is meant to be. Not the best movie I've seen from that era, but then again, so many have been made ... sometimes you might even have issues to distinguish some of them ... Still a decent effort if you're a fan of that era and that genre.

Okay, I've seen my fair share of 70's Italian crime movies... about half that exist I'd imagine, maybe a little less. The only ones worse than this are the ones from Mario Bianchi and Alfonso Brescia just because those are so campy. What really sinks this one is a very low budget. Everything seems awfully third-world, from the flatly shot dialog scenes, boring chases, and toned-down shootouts.

Not to mention the dubbing - by God, this has to be the worst dub-job I've ever seen on an Italian film! Borderline unwatchable had it not been so unintentionally funny. Take the scene where Sonia Viviani gets raped by Salvatore Billa for instance... the actress dubbing her voice is far less than convincing and just keeps calmly saying "no please let me go" about 16x in a row. I don't even think the dubbers actually watched the movie, as the plot points don't even make sense, and the comic relief provided by the lieutenant just confusing.

That said, this has a very good cast (Lastretti, Merenda, Murolo, Billa, and the genre regulars) and moves along fairly quickly with its fair share of violence. There's just a lot of better ones out there such as anything by Castellari, Lenzi, or even Stelvio Massi. This one looks more like a better-funded-than-usual student film.

This is the first film I've seen by Tarantini and hope to see other work by him. The story is about a Milanese cop (Luc Merenda) assigned to bust the mob in Naples. What makes the film worth watching is that the film has bits of unexpected originality sparking what would have been in lesser hands, a routine film. Tarantini also uses very dynamic framing in the cinematography, with lots of low angle shots as well as using extreme close ups for contrast. The action includes several shoot outs, car chases and a fistful of dynamite. While some of the humor is culture specific with the rivalry between northern and southern Italy, other bits are handled lightly eliciting some earned chuckles courtesy of co-star Enzo Cannavele. The DVD probably looks better than when the film first hit theaters, with 5.1 Dolby I am sure it sounds better.

When Naples steps out of line: EuroCRIME with Luc MERENDA

This film by Michele Massimo TARANTINI is certainly not the strongest crime film from the Italian heyday of the genre.

Luc Merenda plays an inspector who comes to Naples and has to get used to some of the drudgery. Enzo Cannavale plays his assistant, who is completely different from the dashing inspector. But he can drive like hell; it's not for nothing that they call him "Nicola Lauda." The way the unlikely team pulls together and sets their sights on their common enemy Don Domenico (Claudio Gora) is one of the film's strengths. It is also interesting that three complex female characters are introduced: the not so "eternal" victim Rosa (Sonia Viviani), the cunning lady boss Carola (Marianne Comtell) and the smart girl Luisa (Francesca Guadagno). Beyond that, only dozens of items are offered from the assembly line. There are more worthy representatives of the genre.

The Italian audience seems to have liked it quite a bit, with 999 million ITL sales in the domestic box office being decent. The film did not make it into West German cinemas.

Man, I pity those poor fellows who end up being Mafia bosses. Must be a really stressful job. You've got to uphold the exterior 'upstanding citizen' routine so that hotheaded cops can be shouted down by their superiors, you make high pressure drug deals with other high-level guys, and worst of all, your employees are all nasty criminals by default, so the ever present threat of one of them double crossing you must be a terrible strain.

Look at the fella in this film, Don Whatsisface. He sets up a nice deal with German guy to supply him a whole lot of dope, then someone turns around, guns down the dealers, and still steals the blow. You just can't get the employees. Get this though - someone then double crosses the henchman that double crossed the mob boss, which ends up in a whole heap of corpses for the cops to clean up.

One of those cops in Luc Merenda, and he's just arrived in Naples from Milan to find that the pizza is a lot better, but the crime is just as bad as everywhere else. Luc and his Neopolitan sidekick set off to figure out what the hell is going on with these shooting, with a little help from a mystery grass who keeps sending him hand drawn pictures of crime that are about to happen.

So it's business as usual for this Eurocrime film, but there's loads of action, car chases, and Merenda beating up bad guys, so who's going to complain? That actor playing his sidekick is rather good too, giving a bit more humanity to the blossoming bromance between the two cops. There's also a fair amount of violence with one particular gangster whacking rather a lot of people, including one guy who get blown up by dynamite.