Kidnap Syndicate may not be the all action thrill ride that describes many of the Polizi flicks, but this is still an excellent example of the genre, and one that delivers a little more than just car chases and shootouts. As the title suggests, the film focus on the profitable business of kidnapping, and director Fernando Di Leo does an excellent job of showing the horror of th...
A Man Called Magnum aka Napoli Si Ribella/Naples Turns On Itself is far from a forgotten classic. In fact, despite bland good cop Meranda's interesting relationship with his sidekick, an intriguing but underused twist involving the identity of a police informer and one good car stunt where he stops a train carrying two hit men by crashing his car on the tracks, it's pretty aver...
This is surely one of the lamest poliziotteschi I've ever come across, with just about the only thing going for it being the unusual and exotic Istanbul locations. Even nominal star Luc Merenda is underused; in fact, a lot of the running time is devoted to a Turkish family man who happens to be an infallible sharpshooter, and is unwillingly recruited by the mob in order to elim...
I went into this film under the impression that it would be an Italian crime flick. It is; but it's not the type I'm used to, as instead of all the fights and car chases that I would usually expect from this sort of film, we merely get lumbered with a load of talking and theories that don't have much weight behind them and thus the result is really boring. The plot focuses on a...
Although pretty much forgotten, The Last Round aka Il Conto é Chiuso is a good example of a familiar story made fresh by the quality of its execution, as a stranger drifts into a decaying Italian industrial looking to settle an old score. But this violent modern-day (well, 1976) poliziotteschi is closer to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest than the first two films it inspired, Yoj...
A very good "spaghetti polar" from the talented director Fernando DiLeo. Luc Merenda isn't the best leading man of the genre but the rest of the cast is first rate, so is the inevitable car chase occurring in the middle of the story. There is also an interesting look at police corruption in Italy - a theme very sensitive at that time there, I guess - delivered by an intelligent...
Sergio Martino's 1973 poliziotteschi The Violent Professionals aka Milano Trema – La Polizia Vuole Giustizia doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, but it's one of the better examples of an overpopulated genre, with Luc Merenda playing the typical shoot-first-so-you-don't-have-to-ask-questions-later maverick cop after the gang that killed his boss and several innocent bystanders. ...