In the murderous midst of confrontationally bloody, bullet-shredded milieu of the Poliziotteschi's cathartically violent heyday, assured film-maker Vittorio 'Savage Three' Salerno helms one of the Gung ho genre's more overtly damning, aggressively political works in his slipknot taut thriller 'No, The Case is Happily Resolved' wherein blameless, if somewhat aimless proletariat Fabio Santamaria whilst on one of his frequent fishing excursions, disbelievingly observes the uncomfortably frenzied bludgeoning of a terrified young woman by one of 'polite' societies finest, the highly regarded scholar Ranieri (Riccardo Cucciolla), suddenly riven in disorientating panic, the massively distraught Fabio, acting in a moment of grievous ill judgement, he fails to immediately report the heinous crime, thereby inadvertently allowing the coldly Machiavellian, middle-class assassin to effectively manipulate the desperate situation to his favour, his lofty position of immense privilege, ostensibly being a 'person of merit', one of the vaunted financial and hierarchical elite, he is thusly able to generously weigh the mutable scales of justice to his benefit, the iniquities of the class system callously corrupted to actively work against the entirely innocent, increasingly paranoid Fabio! Salerno's excitingly plotted, Kafkaesque crime thriller has a palpably nightmarish quality, strongly redolent of master film-maker Damiano Damiani's equally enervating 'I am Afraid' (1978). With its excruciatingly maintained tension, breathlessly circuitous narrative, this exemplary Euro-crime classic has lost none of its vitriol, and with the process of law no less corrupt, Vittorio Salerno's remarkably deep, immaculately acted, sinuously directed, flint-edged masterpiece remains sadly entirely relevant today, and this pristine Blu-ray restoration is an absolute revelation, and a demonstrative must-see for avid Euro-cult enthusiasts and casual crime film fans alike, and, once again, maestro Riz Ortolani creates another sublime score.
