Silent Action (1975)

aka La polizia accusa: il servizio segreto uccide

A small yet strange series of deaths of people working for the Ministry of Defense and the military hits Italy. Since all of the deaths seem to be accidental or suicides, no alarm bells start to ring anywhere. That's a problem, because the deaths are in fact murders and we the viewers the only witnesses.

The Roman cop Solmi (Luc Merenda) is as unsuspecting as anyone else, until he is starting to investigate the death of the private detective Chiarotti. Chiarotti's death is murder all right - his head has been bashed in with a fire poker. It's just all a little strange. Why is a mere detective as rich as Chiarotti was? Solmi soon finds a prostitute (Delia Boccardo) who must have been present when the detective was killed, but she nearly dies in a murder attempt that's made to look like a suicide. She can't tell Solmi much anyway. That Chiarotti was having an argument with a man and was killed by the man is pretty much all she knows. Useful descriptions are not forthcoming.

For DA Mannino (Mel Ferrer), the girl is still the main suspect in the case, whatever Solmi may think about her physical fitness to kill the victim with a few poker strikes and the psychological absurdity of the theory.

The case gets more interesting when a man gets arrested while breaking into Chiarotti's villa and stealing a single hidden piece of tape with the voice of a dead general declining to cooperate with a man named Rienzi. Even more interesting is the fact that the burglar claims to work for the Secret Service.

Solmi diligently asks the Secret Service what's up, but their Captain Sperli (Tomas Milian) denies everything, as spies are wont to do, but is still interested in talking to the burglar and hearing what's on the tape. When Solmi and Sperli get to the tape, it turns out to have been erased.

This is of course not the last time in the film that Solmi's witnesses are killed or kidnapped or someone who must be pretty close to the investigation interferes with it, but once his sense of justice is awakened, Solmi can't be dissuaded to leave the case be.

People know and love Silent Action's director Sergio Martino mostly for his Giallos, but as a working commercial director, he of course did his time in whatever genre was the flavor of the day, how fitting or unfitting his talents might have been.

Silent Action combines the Italian cop movie with the conspiracy thriller arm of the spy movie, both genres Martino's talents are surprisingly fitting for. The director was always an excellent craftsman, using every bit of technique he could afford to keep his films entertaining. If you ask me, the emphasis on "keeping his films entertaining" is the main difference between him and Bava or Argento who were more artfully minded and willing to use their visual talents to push their films in other, more experimental directions not every audience would be able or willing to follow all of the time. While I love both Bava's and Argento's films, I can't say that I blame Martino for "just" trying to make perfectly great genre films.

In the case of Silent Action, Martino was quite successful. After a somewhat slow start, the film picks up tempo until its plot is ticking along at a joyous pace. I read complaints about a certain lack of action in the movie, but that lack of action only exists in comparison with a handful of Italian cop movies that just don't need as much time to build their plot as a conspiracy thriller does and in the minds of people with severe ADD - on planet reality, there is plenty of chases and shoot-outs to admire, and while Martino as an action director is no Enzo G. Castellari, he is still pretty damn good.

"Pretty damn good" is also a fitting description for Luc Merenda's performance. Merenda usually is the Italian cop movie guy people forget when listing their top five actors in the genre (I blame the lack of a moustache, the moustacheless niche already filled by Fabio Testi), but he really is no slouch. His Solvi is a rather interesting variation on the cop movie hero - besides the lack of a moustache, he is less prone to long, reactionary rants about the evils of modern society and the beauty of the police state and shows a certain restraint in the use of unnecessary violence. Why, it even takes an hour until he starts to torture someone, and even then he's downright subtle about it. This of course makes his character surprisingly believable as someone actually interested in justice and not a vigilante as most of the dubious heroes of police movies often are. This time, the cop hero is actually someone to root for, giving the typical 70s conspiracy film ending (and if someone thinks that this counts as a spoiler, I just can't help it) a bit of weight even though the conspiracy itself isn't all that memorable.

All in all, it's a very fine film that balances the need for action and the need for investigation scenes as effortlessly as Martino is able to decide when to use his hand camera and when a long tracking shot.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,luc merenda,sergio martino,cops,conspiracy,reviews,tomas milian

Revolver (1973)

Vito Cipriani (Oliver Reed), an ex-cop, is now working as the vice governor of a prison in Milan.

He has recently married Anna (Agostina Belli) and both are mentally still in their honeymoon period. So it is no surprise that it hits Cipriani hard when his wife is suddenly kidnapped. The kidnappers don't take long to make contact with him. Their proposition is simple, either Cipriani somehow makes the escape of the small time crook Milo Ruiz (Fabio Testi) possible, or Anna dies.

At first, Cipriani does his best to beat the identity of the man's secretive benefactors out of Ruiz, but the criminal is either an extremely good liar under duress (believe me, you do not want to kidnap Oliver Reed's wife) or just doesn't know who would want him freed.

Cipriani doesn't dare to go to the police without any clues to the identity of his wife's kidnappers, and so hasn't any other choice than help Ruiz escape.

The ex-cop is no fool - he hangs on to Ruiz as his only means to get his wife back. Unfortunately the kidnapper's aren't as professional as their boss would like them to be, or Cipriani's involvement in the affair would end here, with the criminal in their hands and Anna back home. Alas, they don't bring her.

Various action set pieces lead Cipriani and a rather relaxed Ruiz to France where both men must agree on a truce if they want to survive the affair they have stumbled into, an affair that turns out to be much more difficult and a lot more political than the men ever could have expected.

 

Revolver begins as a very tight cop movie with less time for self-righteous speeches and more sympathy for the criminals than usual. Just when you think you have it figured out as an extremely slick if not very original variation on typical buddy movie tropes, the film throws you a curveball and goes and turns itself into a pessimistic early 70s conspiracy thriller of the highest caliber. The ending of the film is frightening in its consequence - the best in people is just another angle to be used against them; there is no escape from the system, while even the price it pays you for selling out in the end turns out to be just another kind of lie.

Of course some nice bits of stunt-writing and a pessimistic view on society and human nature don't necessarily make for a good film. Fortunately, Revolver has a lot more to offer, for example a driving soundtrack by Ennio Morricone and very solid English dubbing with Oliver Reed doing his own voice work (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if he had rewritten some of his dialogue - you usually don't hear such sensible use of the word "fuck" in Italian dub-jobs; that Reed, he knew how to curse).

Sergio Sollima's direction is something of a revelation - I knew his qualities from his Spaghetti Westerns, but in my experience most Italian genre directors have two, at best three genres they are really good at (unless we are talking about people like Bianchi - that's more a case of having different degrees of suckitude in different genres), and there was just no guarantee of police movie/conspiracy thriller being one of Sollima's strong ones. I like to be wrong in cases like this.

Sollima does an incredible job of keeping the tempo of the film high, while at the same time moving effortlessly from the action to character moments in a way that should make most of the hacks in the action genre cry.

The main actors are also doing a terrific job. Naturally, Reed does his shouty bits and chews some scenery, but has his acting ticks well under control this time, turning himself into a bundle of spit, intensity, barely controlled violence and plain desperation. This kind of acting often brings the danger of just stomping over the other actors with it. Somehow, Testi holds his ground with a much more laid back portrayal of the rather sympathetic crook who in the end turns out to have a much stronger conviction to truth than Reed's man of the law.

This is as highly recommended as possible.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,action,thriller,conspiracy,oliver reed,fabio testi,sergio sollima,reviews