Convoy Busters

It's a film of two halves as Maurizio Merli starts out as a no-nonsense cop with an itchy trigger finger and ends up as a bored cop with an itchy arse in this slightly different cop film from Stelvio Massi.

Someone has killed a teenage girl and dumped her in the Tiber. The first suspect, her boyfriend, has ended up being roasted in a car and all evidence points to the son of a local import company owner.

Maurizio beats up half of Rome and discovers it's the boy's father who is the real crook, smuggling diamonds into the country. He's also well connected and while Maurizio has a fine time gunning down henchman, he has a lot of trouble getting to the boss due to being bogged down with red tape.

Pissed off, beaten down, and hacked off, Maurizio only goes and shoots a cop by accident. We'll never know if he told anyeone about it or just left the guy lying in the street because the next thing you know Maurizio is taking up a post on a coastal town. Don't be so down-hearted Mo, here comes Olga Karlatos!

Maurizio starts himself a little romance, but one day at the docks he realises that a certain fish that the trawlers brought in is not indigenous to the Adriatic Sea, and this sets off another action packed escapade. I'm not kidding - that's how good a detective Maurizio is!

Ending one story in the middle of the film and switching to an entirely different place keeps the film interesting, even though the film is a bit front heavy on the action front. You won't hear me complaining about Maurizio gunning people down from a helicopter, mostly because I don't talk about these things out loud, but also because no one ever listens to me, ever.

Still, this is a strong film even for those people who are a bit picky about these things, and it's a wonderful tale about a man who falls out of love with his gun, only to learn to love it again - by using it to kill bad guys.

This is one of Stelvio Massi's best movies ever. A lot of first class stunts, chases and shootings that make this movie better than the average of Italian 'poliziotteschi' movies. But the whole plot is about a man who feels uncomfortable with himself both as a cop and as a man. The title in Italian is "Un poliziotto scomodo", literally "An uncomfortable cop". It has been freely translated as "Convoy Buster" even though there's no convoy in the whole movie. The original title has a double meaning. It means both "A bothering cop" and "A discomforted cop". It's a reference to the two halves into which the movie can be subdivided.

In the first half Inspector Olmi is in Rome, investigating on a double murder related to a rich and politically influential diamond smuggler. As Inspector Olmi finds out that the smuggler has bribed the judge who had to sue him, he realizes that it's depressing to be such a goop cop if you ain't backed by the system. Instead of promoting him, in fact, the local chief of police degrades him from homicide division to patrol. Inspector Olmi understands he is bothering the "big fishes", so he decides to give up and move to a quiet seaside small town, where he locks down is gun and tries to be an anonymous non-violent officer. He meets a beautiful woman who eventually becomes his girlfriend. But organized crime won't leave him alone as he finds out a gang of gun dealers that operates in that area. He resumes his Clint Eastwood's attitude and manages to annihilate the criminals, but in the final scene we see him drop down his gun and badge, desperate at his own tragic fate: he is not fit for life, since he is not appreciated as the good cop he is and there's nowhere he can hide from violence and blood-thirsty organized crime...

One of those excellent movies when there was no such thing as a happy ending...

I haven't seen very many movies in the poliziottesco genre, but "Un poliziotto scomodo" ("Convoy Busters" in English) manages to be entertaining enough. As in a number of movies, the main character - a cop - tries to do everything the right way, but ends up on everyone's bad side, meaning that he has to go to extreme measures. It obviously looks more questionable in the era of awareness of cops randomly shooting people. If you just take the movie at face value without interpreting it as any sort of advice, then it's a pretty enjoyable romp. We get some fine shots of the Italian countryside. No masterpiece but pretty fun.

While this film isn't quite as dreary as FEARLESS FUZZ (which must have spent almost its entire budget coaxing Joan Collins to guest star), CONVOY BUSTERS still feels too sloppy to really compete with the other, much better work Maurizio Merli did for Umberto Lenzi and Marino Girolami. Stelvio Massi's films always felt like cut-rate Umberto Lenzi, though with a much higher emphasis on creative camera angles and slow motion, so with a little Antonio Margheriti and Enzo Castellari mixed in. However his films certainly suffered from lack of money, and this film is no exception.

Maurizio Merli starts the movie on the tail of a ruthless killer and diamond smuggler who frustratingly slips out of his grasp. Oddly enough, the movie completely switches gears and spends its second half in a sleepy seaside community when Merli gets transferred to get away from it all. This sort of thing would never be green-lit today as the nervous studio execs would demand that the villain find his comeuppance or at least have something tie in from the first half later on. No such luck.

The strangeness of this film is really what sets it the most apart from Merli's other more routine late-70's police outings. There's a couple great scenes in there like when Merli (albeit unrealistically) hunts down several crooks with a helicopter armed only with a revolver with what must be "criminal-seeking bullets". Things get muddled when he meets a girl (the stunning Olga Karlatos) and it turns into an awkward romance as everyone (you, me, and both of them) can tell he's way more into his work than her.

Another memorable goofy scene highlights some miscast 30-somethings as teenagers terrorizing a stadium and shooting at the whimpering owner who looks like either a bloated Sean Penn or a late-career Zalman King. Merli shows up and administers more of his productive signature beatings, but to the teens and not the owner.

The main gang at the end really lacks much of a sense of menace, even when they take hostages. This film really could have used better actors as henchmen but unfortunately plays its cards too soon as Nello Pazzafini and Riccardo Petrazzi only get one short scene as a pair of robbers shacked up with a sleepy hippy chick who gets delightfully shot through the wrist. More beatings ensue.

Definitely a hit-and-miss affair. Set your expectations low and you'll have a lot more fun than THE REBEL or FEARLESS FUZZ. The most memorable aspect of the film is the scene where Maurizio Merli fatally shoots some innocent bystander and promptly just forgets about the whole thing.

Cult actor Maurizio Merli, or "The Magnificent Moustache" as I just decided to start calling him, was the one and only true badass Italian copper of the 70s! Haters may refer to him as just a poor and hardly talented Franco Nero doppelganger (and they may even have a point), but for devoted fans of the wondrous Poliziotesschi sub genre, he always remains the archetypic and charismatic symbol of raw & unorthodox police work and outrageously wild car chases. The collaborations with director Umberto Lenzi ("Violent Naples", "The Cynic, The Rat and "The Fist") undoubtedly formed the high-point of Merli's career, but he also made a number of amusing films with Stelvio Massi, of which this "Convoy Busters" may be the best one.

Actually, I don't like the international title "Convoy Busters". It's meaningless and irrelevant, and probably just chosen to sound reminiscent to the contemporary successful US flicks "Convoy" (Sam S. Peckinpah) and "Wages of Fear" (William Friedkin). The original Italian title is very apt and powerful, in fact, especially seen over the course of the entire film. "Un Poliziotto Scomodo" literally translates as "An Uncontrolled Cop", and uncontrolled definitely describes Merli's character Commissioner Olmi. In his homestead Rome, Olmi investigates the brutal murder of a young girl whose body got dumped in a river with the throat clean and surgically cut. The search, as well as numerous other vile crimes, leads to the rich and hugely influential politician Degan, but Olmi is unable to make an arrest, since he gets protection from the equally corrupted prosecutor and even Olmi's own direct superior. Frustrated that Degan gets away with literally everything right under his nose, Olmi's working methods become even more unorthodox, and so his superiors quickly find a good enough reason to transfer him to a quiet and practically crimeless coastal town. Here, Olmi comes to rest and even finds romance, but his strong police instincts uncover a well-organized weapon trafficking network via the sea and involving local companies.

Due to the abrupt transfer of Merli's character from Rome to the little village, and the complementary change in tone & pacing, it almost feels as if you're watching two entirely different Poliziotesschi flicks! The first part is obviously better, with the traditional 'violent city' setting, better action and familiar footage (like Merli yelling against his supervisors or literally beating a confession out of suspects). The opening scene, with the discovery of the dead girl in the water, almost feels like a genuine giallo. The scenes in which Merli shoots bad guys from inside a helicopter is iconic Poliziotesschi; - especially the last shot in slow-motion! The second part, at the seaside, is interesting as well, but Merli clearly feels uncomfortable playing the sensitive guy and kissing his love-interest. The intense climax, with a hostage situation at an elementary school, compensates for a lot, though!