Poliziottesco with Joe Dallesandro and Stefania Casini
After breaking away from underground director Paul Morrissey and the factory of the genius of the century Andy Warhol, Joe Dallesandro, born in 1948, began his own attempts at European genre cinema. Under the direction of the Napolitan Pasquale Squitieri, who was Claudia Cardinale's partner from 1975 to 2001, he plays Aldo, the social climber. As a small-time mafioso in Naples, he works in cigarette smuggling, cheats on his boss (Raymond Pellegrin, he was still the inspector in "Manhunt in the City"), is thrown out of the gang and starts over in Rome. There he gets to know and love a naive supermarket cashier (Stefania Casini, who is also known from "Suspiria" (1977)). As Aldo climbs further up the criminal hierarchy with the help of a motorcycle gang, the private dark side of gangster life also becomes apparent.
The German title is somewhat misleading. Motorcycles do appear, but we don't have a biker film here. Rather, it's about the story of the rise of a small-time crook to become a crime boss. It's compelling, but not told in a particularly original way. The model stuntman Giovanni Cianfriglia can also be seen in a smaller role.
A typical gangster film from Italian mass production with a tailor-made role for the always somewhat boyish and wicked Joe Dallesandro. When engagements in the Roman film industry went downhill in the early 1980s, he returned to the USA. In 1984 and 1987, for example, Joe Dallesandro appeared as a guest star in the cult series "Miami Vice".
Certainly not the best gangster film from Italy, but all in all it's definitely worth seeing!
