Poliziotti violenti

This is not a great movie. Director Michelle Massimo Taranti was very much a hack, and moreover a hack who usually specialized in comedy. Lead actor Henry Silva, on the other hand, was best playing either villains or VERY morally ambiguous anti-heroes (like the brutal gangsters he portrayed in "Cry of a Prostitute" and "The Boss"). Here though he's an annoyingly straight-arrow parachute major who has been sidelined from the army after he filed a report about defective parachutes. He comes to the city and decides to wage a one-man war on crime and corruption after he realizes organized bands of criminals seem to be getting their hands on military weapons. He is helped by a macho but possibly homosexual cop (Antonio Sabato). With the exception of a downbeat ending (and the homosexual subtext), this is way too much like an 80's era American police thriller (a genre which I personally hate).

This movie does have some good points. The pure stupidity of the plot is at times pretty entertaining. Silva ALWAYS seems to be where the action is. At one point he thwarts a kidnapping, but nearly barbecues the victim after running the kidnapper's car off the road. Then he knocks a would-be mugger off his scooter bike and the poor guy is set upon by a pack of vengeful senior citizens who beat him mercilessly with their canes in a truly surreal scene. The whole homosexual subtext is also interesting, especially when Sabato's character takes Silva's character into a transvestite bar and goes in the back room to "pump an informant" (actually he slaps the transvestite around, but for all our straight-laced hero knows. . .). I don't mean to imply, however, that this is really a gay movie. Silva, at least, has a love interest played by the sexy Silvia Dionisio. And Dionisio gets naked twice, not in particularly erotic scenes (in the first one she's being assaulted by goons), but a movie with Silvia Dionisio getting naked is ALWAYS better than a movie without Silvia Dionisio getting naked.

All in all, this is a pretty mixed bag. It's not great, but it's not totally worthless either.