How much mileage can you get out of a genre involving maverick cops who play by their own rules? Even though the genre is on the wane, Stelvio Massi pulls another great film out of the bag.
Maurizio Merli is indeed a maverick cop who plays by his own rules, but he's also retired at the start of this film until old partner Francisco Rabal shows up at his door and asks for his help. Rabal has branched out as a bodyguard but isn't doing too well. His last two clients were murdered and Rabal reckons he's got one more chance before he gets the boot. Merli reluctantly agrees to help, perhaps because of the offer of a free trip to Venice
Merli tries his best, but this German businessman still ends up with a bullet in the back of his head. Annoyed at this, Merli bursts through an entire window all guns blazing and takes down what seems to be a hundred or so bad guys, but not before Rabal gets a cap popped in his ass. One dead ex-partner later, Merli swears revenge. He's so punch-happy in this film I'm surprised he didn't give Rabal's corpse a final sock on the jaw before he left the hospital, although he does assault a seriously injured bad guy so it's all good anyway.
I was just letting the awesomeness flow over me by this point so I'm sketchy on the details, but somehow Merli manages to pass himself off as the injured bad guy and heads to Berlin to get revenge for Rabal, get it on with a blonde chick, but will he actually get revenge for Rabal (certainly) and still save the life of the blonde chick (optional)?
Massi throws in all the goodness you need from this kind of stuff: Merli being cunning and passing various tests for the bad guys (mad driving skills, killing folk) while having a more complicated relationship than usual with the blonde chick. She's part of the gang but she also loves Merli, who kind of loves her back but then likes punching people in the face more, but then again he slapped her about a bit and she tried to have him killed, so who knows what's going on there. You've got your shoot-outs, foot chases, people falling off things, and Merli being beaten up by Bobby Rhodes, who looks about ten feet tall.
How many more of these films did Merli make? I'll have to find out what he did after the genre went down the tubes.
