If The Beyond is one of the most single minded of Italian horror films, inasmuch as its anti-narrative is little more than an excuse for stringing together its set pieces and contributing further to its mood, Highway Racer / Poliziotto sprint might be taken as something of its analogue within the poliziotto filone.
For just about everything in it is geared towards showcasing car stunts and chases, to the extent that the contributions of director Stelvio Massi and leading man Maurizio Merli almost feel peripheral at times compared to Remy Julienne and his team: Who staged this scene? Who was behind the wheel of Merli's car, when everything is in long shot and the windows are tinted?
Merli plays Marco Palma, a Rome cop determined to prove he's the best driver out there. This is an opinion not shared by his boss Tagliaferri, due to Palma's tendency to write off one car after another and show little regard for the safety of others, and because in his day Tagliaferri was himself a hot-shot driver.
When Tagliaferri's old nemesis il Nazzardo shows up in Rome to lead a series of audacious robberies, Palma finally gets his chance as he is charged with infiltrating the gang. This necessitates his being shown all of Tagliaferri's old tricks – and showing his teacher some of his own, as far as gunplay is concerned – and given that symbol of Italian machismo, the Ferrari. (Since Lambourghini started off making farm machinery such as tractors, they don't count.)
There's a nationalistic aspect to the cars used by the two sides more generally, with the Italian cops driving the usual boxy Alfa-Romeos – albeit with a blue and white livery rather than the more usually seen green and white squadra volante design – and the French-led robbers preferring the elegant lines of the Citroen DS series.
Where the film fails is away from its action sequence. As written, Merli's character is pretty unsympathetic, with the death of his partner, the result of his reckless driving in their first encounter with il Nazzardo, warranting no soul searching, desire for revenge or even comment. He also plays the role without his trademark moustache. While this helps in making Marco seem more youthful it also creates something of an alienation effect, causing you to do a double take that this is in fact Merli.
While Marco has a girlfriend, played by Lilli Carati, she's included more for the possibility of threatening to reveal his real identity when he is undercover than anything else and, as such, also jars a bit given the single-mindedness he shows in other regards. Still, she does work for a car dealers...
Stelvio Cipriani provides the score, a collection of characteristically ostenato-driven funky / percussive tension-builders.
Showing posts with label Maurizio Merli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maurizio Merli. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Sbirro, la tua legge è lenta... la mia... no! / Hunted City
Merli, Merola and Massi
How can you go wrong?
You can't, though it's true that the way in which Merli and Merola's characters operate is perhaps not quite as fans would expect at times, whilst Massi's direction might also come across as somewhat lazy in its frequent reliance upon the zoom.
The truth, I would argue, is that Hunted City has a different approach to the poliziotto that, when considered in wider relation to the films of Umberto Lenzi and Massi's earlier filone entries such as the Marc the Narc series gives a tentative sense of an emergent auteur at work.
Massi's films are more complex in their characterisation, narrative and politics whilst Lenzi's tend to have the superior set-pieces. This is not, however, to diminish the action sequences here or elsewhere in Massi's oeuvre. They're perfectly satisfactory but just don't have the same jaw-dropping intensity as those of Lenzi at his best.
Hunted City begins in classic fashion with the gunning down of a mafia-connected financier, Mr Guidi, followed by the arrival of Merli's cop, Commissioner Paolo Ferro – a name suggestive of his iron nature and also recalling a previous Massi / Merli collaboration, Il Comissario di Ferro – in Milan, where he is met by sidekick Arrigo, on hand to provide comic relief and a sense of contrast with Merli's ubercop.
The first deviation from formula comes when we are introduced to Merola's restauranteur Raffaele Acampora, an ex-mafioso – or at least member of the Camorra; as with most subtitled Italian crime films the distinctions aren't always made clear – telling and showing some punks who try to shake him down for protection exactly where they can go.
He's the sort of character you wouldn't get in a Lenzi film where things tend to be that much more obvious. At this point in the Lenzi version, we'd no doubt have a scene in which we were told that Merola was only using his restaurants as a legitimate front to conceal his illegal activities; a scene which would also likely preclude the preceding shakedown attempt unless it has been staged for the benefit of Merli.
But here, in Massi's vision and version of Violent Milan, we go straight the arrival of Merli's cop as the men are ejecte, being comparatively warmly received by Merola and given the information he's after. It's not so much that Acompara has an alibi, which is as would be expected, as that he had already satisfactorily completed his business dealings with Guidi and, in any case, appears to be doing far better as a legitimate businessman than an illegitimate one. This said, as the film progresses another aspect of Massi's shades of grey approach that emerges is to repeatedly blur the boundaries around respectability and legitimacy anyway; while Lenzi's films also blur the boundaries as a means of criticising the society of the times his protagonists tended to stand apart and above such compromises.
Next, Ferro visits his sister and her family. It's here that one of the film's dramatic contrivances emerges as we recognise her son Stefano's friend as the hitman who killed Guidi. An improbable coincidence perhaps, but one that is excusable and explicable in relation to genre formula whilst also providing for much needed suspense and drama given the anti-climatic nature of the preceding sequence: is Stefano also mixed up in the syndicate? If so will Ferro realise in time and how will he react?
As the assassinations continue, the next victim being a lawyer who is gunned down by some masked, tennis-bag carrying hitmen, another party becomes involved in the form of Don Alfonso, played by Francisco Rabal – albeit almost unrecognisable with / without (not being certain of which is the case) his hairpiece.
Though Alfonso and Ferro have a shared past, the way this works again proves distinctive. Regarding one another as honourable and worthy opponents, a rare commodity in the film's milieux and arguably that of the wider society it represents, the two men agree to put past differences behind them in pursuit of their common enemies:
Ferro: “I once did you a favour”
Alfonso: “But that's how honoured family members speak”
Again, in our imagined Lenzi version of the film it's hard to see the lines being crossed in this way whilst even if they were there would surely be a double-cross from the mafioso sooner or later. Here, by contrast, Ferro is sufficiently trusting to eventually have the Don arrange a hit on him through his contacts – a desparate strategy that he hopes will bring the elusive murder syndicate into the open...
Returning to the subject of Massi's direction, I would argue that it encapsulates the kind of vernacular poetry discussed by Mikel Koven in his study of the giallo. Koven's ideas here are based on the theories of Pasolini, who argued for a distinction between a classical “cinema of prose,” which effaced the signs of its own construction, and a modernist “cinema of poetry,” which foregrounded them.
The key aspect of this theory in relation to Hunted City seems less the intersubjective nature of the poetic camera, as revealing the consciousness of the director behind his characters – although I suspect a case could be made for the use of the zooms in and out as conveying a sense of urgency and immediacy whereby no-one has much time to waste – as constantly making us aware of the camera's presence.
Essentially where the classical cinema would use cuts to break a scene up, going from the establishing shot to the medium shot or the close up and reframing whenever someone or something new enters into the set, Massi instead zooms in or out or, less frequently, racks focus instead, as when the camera picks out three gunmen who know one another from the tennis rackets they are carrying across a plaza.
The danger, of course, is that such an approach can easily be seen as lazy filmmaking, the kind of approach that was adopted by filone filmmakers for economic more than aesthetic reasons. Against this it can be noted that Massi also makes use of handheld; some comparatively elaborate mirror based set-ups; false POV shots from inside a vending machine, all in addition to finding some imaginative locations, most notably a church whose hall has been transformed into a firing range. (In this we also get a neat variant on the Dirty Harry “did he fire six bullets or only five” trope, as Ferro calmly blows away the bad guy who's holding a gun to Arrigo's head in the knowledge that the weapon, one of his, is empty.)
The performances are also pleasing, with Merli, Merola and Rabal each giving their characters greater depth than is often the case. Though they may still not be playing the full eight octaves range in a manner acceptable to art cinema snobs, they are considerably more than one note.
The way Massi handles Ferro's love interest is also noteworthy here. First, because he even gets one, as an apparent departure from single-minded duty. Second, because it gives Merli the opportunity to play – as distinct from be – vulnerable. Third, because the way the scenario ultimately plays out is in accord with the comparatively strong female characters present in some of his other films, most obviously the Baader-Meinhof gang styled terrorist played by Marcella Michelangeli in Mark Strikes Again.
Stelvio Cipriani delivers a solid score, with dynamic suspense and action cues incorporating slapped bass and wacka wacka guitar, further demonstrating his stylistic adaptability by substituting disco themes for the kind of organ-heavy shake cues that would have omnipresent earlier in the 70s in the film's obligatory nightclub scene.
[The film is available to download from Cinemageddon]
How can you go wrong?
You can't, though it's true that the way in which Merli and Merola's characters operate is perhaps not quite as fans would expect at times, whilst Massi's direction might also come across as somewhat lazy in its frequent reliance upon the zoom.
The truth, I would argue, is that Hunted City has a different approach to the poliziotto that, when considered in wider relation to the films of Umberto Lenzi and Massi's earlier filone entries such as the Marc the Narc series gives a tentative sense of an emergent auteur at work.
Massi's films are more complex in their characterisation, narrative and politics whilst Lenzi's tend to have the superior set-pieces. This is not, however, to diminish the action sequences here or elsewhere in Massi's oeuvre. They're perfectly satisfactory but just don't have the same jaw-dropping intensity as those of Lenzi at his best.
Hunted City begins in classic fashion with the gunning down of a mafia-connected financier, Mr Guidi, followed by the arrival of Merli's cop, Commissioner Paolo Ferro – a name suggestive of his iron nature and also recalling a previous Massi / Merli collaboration, Il Comissario di Ferro – in Milan, where he is met by sidekick Arrigo, on hand to provide comic relief and a sense of contrast with Merli's ubercop.
The first deviation from formula comes when we are introduced to Merola's restauranteur Raffaele Acampora, an ex-mafioso – or at least member of the Camorra; as with most subtitled Italian crime films the distinctions aren't always made clear – telling and showing some punks who try to shake him down for protection exactly where they can go.
He's the sort of character you wouldn't get in a Lenzi film where things tend to be that much more obvious. At this point in the Lenzi version, we'd no doubt have a scene in which we were told that Merola was only using his restaurants as a legitimate front to conceal his illegal activities; a scene which would also likely preclude the preceding shakedown attempt unless it has been staged for the benefit of Merli.
But here, in Massi's vision and version of Violent Milan, we go straight the arrival of Merli's cop as the men are ejecte, being comparatively warmly received by Merola and given the information he's after. It's not so much that Acompara has an alibi, which is as would be expected, as that he had already satisfactorily completed his business dealings with Guidi and, in any case, appears to be doing far better as a legitimate businessman than an illegitimate one. This said, as the film progresses another aspect of Massi's shades of grey approach that emerges is to repeatedly blur the boundaries around respectability and legitimacy anyway; while Lenzi's films also blur the boundaries as a means of criticising the society of the times his protagonists tended to stand apart and above such compromises.
Next, Ferro visits his sister and her family. It's here that one of the film's dramatic contrivances emerges as we recognise her son Stefano's friend as the hitman who killed Guidi. An improbable coincidence perhaps, but one that is excusable and explicable in relation to genre formula whilst also providing for much needed suspense and drama given the anti-climatic nature of the preceding sequence: is Stefano also mixed up in the syndicate? If so will Ferro realise in time and how will he react?
As the assassinations continue, the next victim being a lawyer who is gunned down by some masked, tennis-bag carrying hitmen, another party becomes involved in the form of Don Alfonso, played by Francisco Rabal – albeit almost unrecognisable with / without (not being certain of which is the case) his hairpiece.
Though Alfonso and Ferro have a shared past, the way this works again proves distinctive. Regarding one another as honourable and worthy opponents, a rare commodity in the film's milieux and arguably that of the wider society it represents, the two men agree to put past differences behind them in pursuit of their common enemies:
Ferro: “I once did you a favour”
Alfonso: “But that's how honoured family members speak”
Again, in our imagined Lenzi version of the film it's hard to see the lines being crossed in this way whilst even if they were there would surely be a double-cross from the mafioso sooner or later. Here, by contrast, Ferro is sufficiently trusting to eventually have the Don arrange a hit on him through his contacts – a desparate strategy that he hopes will bring the elusive murder syndicate into the open...
Returning to the subject of Massi's direction, I would argue that it encapsulates the kind of vernacular poetry discussed by Mikel Koven in his study of the giallo. Koven's ideas here are based on the theories of Pasolini, who argued for a distinction between a classical “cinema of prose,” which effaced the signs of its own construction, and a modernist “cinema of poetry,” which foregrounded them.
The key aspect of this theory in relation to Hunted City seems less the intersubjective nature of the poetic camera, as revealing the consciousness of the director behind his characters – although I suspect a case could be made for the use of the zooms in and out as conveying a sense of urgency and immediacy whereby no-one has much time to waste – as constantly making us aware of the camera's presence.
Essentially where the classical cinema would use cuts to break a scene up, going from the establishing shot to the medium shot or the close up and reframing whenever someone or something new enters into the set, Massi instead zooms in or out or, less frequently, racks focus instead, as when the camera picks out three gunmen who know one another from the tennis rackets they are carrying across a plaza.
The danger, of course, is that such an approach can easily be seen as lazy filmmaking, the kind of approach that was adopted by filone filmmakers for economic more than aesthetic reasons. Against this it can be noted that Massi also makes use of handheld; some comparatively elaborate mirror based set-ups; false POV shots from inside a vending machine, all in addition to finding some imaginative locations, most notably a church whose hall has been transformed into a firing range. (In this we also get a neat variant on the Dirty Harry “did he fire six bullets or only five” trope, as Ferro calmly blows away the bad guy who's holding a gun to Arrigo's head in the knowledge that the weapon, one of his, is empty.)
The performances are also pleasing, with Merli, Merola and Rabal each giving their characters greater depth than is often the case. Though they may still not be playing the full eight octaves range in a manner acceptable to art cinema snobs, they are considerably more than one note.
The way Massi handles Ferro's love interest is also noteworthy here. First, because he even gets one, as an apparent departure from single-minded duty. Second, because it gives Merli the opportunity to play – as distinct from be – vulnerable. Third, because the way the scenario ultimately plays out is in accord with the comparatively strong female characters present in some of his other films, most obviously the Baader-Meinhof gang styled terrorist played by Marcella Michelangeli in Mark Strikes Again.
Stelvio Cipriani delivers a solid score, with dynamic suspense and action cues incorporating slapped bass and wacka wacka guitar, further demonstrating his stylistic adaptability by substituting disco themes for the kind of organ-heavy shake cues that would have omnipresent earlier in the 70s in the film's obligatory nightclub scene.
[The film is available to download from Cinemageddon]
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
I Gabbiani volano basso / Seagulls Fly Low
In this obscure 1978 thriller Maurizio Merli is cast somewhat against type as a professional killer. I say somewhat because, as we soon learn, he's not really a bad guy and more a victim of circumstance: a Vietnam veteran who grew tired of the war and deserted, he found himself in Italy where he was forced into working for businessman-cum-criminal Micheli, played by Mel Ferrer.
The film begins with what is supposed to be Merli's last job, the assassination of Martini, a former business partner of Micheli and his colleague Calvi; though some of the organisation's own men, like the one played by Franco Garofalo, could easily have performed the hit just as well, Micheli correctly felt it safer to employ an outsider.
Merli's problems only really start as he boards the plane for New York, equipped with a one-way ticket and a forget passport. One of the other passengers suffers a heart attack and everyone has to disembark and wait in the departure lounge. In an uncharacteristic loss of composure, Merli comes to believe that his fake passport has been detected by the airport security, and thus flees from the airport and back to Micheli.
Maurizio Merli as Jeff Blynn?
Maurizio Merli sans moustache
We might however wonder if he doesn't make too much a show of his panic, running through the airport, stealing a car and then driving off at high speed; perhaps airport security was just that bit more relaxed 30 years ago.
While Micheli deals with the situation with customary calmness, helping Merli to change his appearance and arranging for another passport to be made – I keep using the actor's name because his character tellingly doesn't really have one, being referred to as “the mechanic” and “the freak” initially and then using the alias “Albert Morgan” – Calvi starts to worry about his own exposure and thus orders Garofalo to take care of Micheli, setting up Merli to take the fall...
Some dubious red tinted Vietnam flashbacks
Competently if unexceptionally directed, as the kind of film where the stylish moments tend to come across as such, rather than being seamlessly integrated into the whole, and featuring a good cast, also including Dagmar Lassander as a nightclub proprietor and Nathalie Delon as the lost soul who takes sympathy on Merli (“you mustn't give up now; it's not as if you've killed somebody” ironically foregrounding exactly what he cannot tell her) to add glamour and romance, it's something of a mystery why Seagulls Fly Low isn't better known.
Featuring a passable quotient of action, plenty of suspense and a suitably dark and cynical 70s worldview – though film noir and French poetic realism certainly establish a longer heritage here – the film gives Merli far more to do as an actor than was usually the case, his role being marked by a world-weary reluctance to use a gun or his fists alien to his Iron Inspector characters and, after he meets Delon, the tentative possibility of his life taking another course.
Perhaps part of the problem was that Merli's fans were happy to see him play an essentially tragic, doomed character, but wanted to see him go down fighting rather more if he was not to ultimately be triumphant. To make a neo-noir comparison, trying imagining a Point Blank where Lee Marvin's character didn't go on a quixotic quest for his money.
Another possibility is that in initially looking a bit like Jeff Blynn, with longer and bushier hair than usual, and then losing the iconic moustache, he simply wasn't immediately recognisable as Merli. To make a noir comparison, we might think of Orson Welles's deconstruction of Rita Hayworth's image in The Lady from Shanghai.
The familiar image of a plane departing
Or maybe it's just the title: while its meaning is explained in the course of the film, it doesn't exactly tell you what to expect. In the world of the filone cinema this mattered, as director Giorgio Cristalli clearly knew from previous credits such as You're Jinxed, Friend, You've Met Sacramento and Four Gunmen of the Holy Trinity.
To summarise, a film that's worth the Merli fan's attention but which probably won't appeal to the more casual poliziotto viewer who only wants to see car chases, shootouts and fist-fights.
[The film is available on VHS rip from Cinemageddon]
The film begins with what is supposed to be Merli's last job, the assassination of Martini, a former business partner of Micheli and his colleague Calvi; though some of the organisation's own men, like the one played by Franco Garofalo, could easily have performed the hit just as well, Micheli correctly felt it safer to employ an outsider.
Merli's problems only really start as he boards the plane for New York, equipped with a one-way ticket and a forget passport. One of the other passengers suffers a heart attack and everyone has to disembark and wait in the departure lounge. In an uncharacteristic loss of composure, Merli comes to believe that his fake passport has been detected by the airport security, and thus flees from the airport and back to Micheli.
Maurizio Merli as Jeff Blynn?
Maurizio Merli sans moustache
We might however wonder if he doesn't make too much a show of his panic, running through the airport, stealing a car and then driving off at high speed; perhaps airport security was just that bit more relaxed 30 years ago.
While Micheli deals with the situation with customary calmness, helping Merli to change his appearance and arranging for another passport to be made – I keep using the actor's name because his character tellingly doesn't really have one, being referred to as “the mechanic” and “the freak” initially and then using the alias “Albert Morgan” – Calvi starts to worry about his own exposure and thus orders Garofalo to take care of Micheli, setting up Merli to take the fall...
Some dubious red tinted Vietnam flashbacks
Competently if unexceptionally directed, as the kind of film where the stylish moments tend to come across as such, rather than being seamlessly integrated into the whole, and featuring a good cast, also including Dagmar Lassander as a nightclub proprietor and Nathalie Delon as the lost soul who takes sympathy on Merli (“you mustn't give up now; it's not as if you've killed somebody” ironically foregrounding exactly what he cannot tell her) to add glamour and romance, it's something of a mystery why Seagulls Fly Low isn't better known.
Featuring a passable quotient of action, plenty of suspense and a suitably dark and cynical 70s worldview – though film noir and French poetic realism certainly establish a longer heritage here – the film gives Merli far more to do as an actor than was usually the case, his role being marked by a world-weary reluctance to use a gun or his fists alien to his Iron Inspector characters and, after he meets Delon, the tentative possibility of his life taking another course.
Perhaps part of the problem was that Merli's fans were happy to see him play an essentially tragic, doomed character, but wanted to see him go down fighting rather more if he was not to ultimately be triumphant. To make a neo-noir comparison, trying imagining a Point Blank where Lee Marvin's character didn't go on a quixotic quest for his money.
Another possibility is that in initially looking a bit like Jeff Blynn, with longer and bushier hair than usual, and then losing the iconic moustache, he simply wasn't immediately recognisable as Merli. To make a noir comparison, we might think of Orson Welles's deconstruction of Rita Hayworth's image in The Lady from Shanghai.
The familiar image of a plane departing
Or maybe it's just the title: while its meaning is explained in the course of the film, it doesn't exactly tell you what to expect. In the world of the filone cinema this mattered, as director Giorgio Cristalli clearly knew from previous credits such as You're Jinxed, Friend, You've Met Sacramento and Four Gunmen of the Holy Trinity.
To summarise, a film that's worth the Merli fan's attention but which probably won't appeal to the more casual poliziotto viewer who only wants to see car chases, shootouts and fist-fights.
[The film is available on VHS rip from Cinemageddon]
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brookyln / The Sicilian Boss
Having secretly relocated from Palermo to New York under a false identity and passport, mafia boss Michele Barresi (Mario Barola) is intent on settling old scores back in the old country.
Meanwhile, Rome cop Lieutenant Berni (Maurizio Merli) is investigating one of the resulting hits and, suspecting a Sicilian connection, has arrived in Palermo.
The two men's paths intersect in the form of another mafioso, Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra).
All Berni has to do is bring Scalia to New York so that he can testify against Baressi, so that he can be extradited back to Italy.
All that stands between him and his goal are countless other mafioso and a long journey across unfamiliar territory, along with the quesion of whether Scalia won't try to escape, seek to extract his own justice upon Barresi, or simply refuse to testify...
Men with guns
Released in 1979, Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brooklyn / The Sicilian Boss was to prove the last of Umberto Lenzi's cop films and his final collaboration with the iconic Merli, essaying a character different from Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in name only.
While the film delivers most of what fans will expect, it's telling that a follow-up hinted at by the closing exchange, which would have charted the return journey from Brooklyn to Corleone, never materialised as Lenzi turned his attention to more horror-oriented fare.
Maurizio Merli
The Rome / Palermo / New York culture clash aspect is a good idea in principle, but tends to be negated, at least in the English dub, by the fact that everyone is speaking the same language. A discussion of the Sicilian dialect term cosche, referring to the tightly-wrapped leaves of the artichoke and representing an ironic ideal model for the relationship amongst members of a mafia family, is thus robbed of of much of its potential significance, for example.
The more familiar material - the obligatory chases, fights and shoot outs - is well enough handled as might be expected, but also tends to suffer from overfamiliarity if you've seen the any of the earlier films.
I could almost predict the moment when that driving Franco Micalizzi music - I don't know if I've actually heard it before, or if it just seemed that way - was going to kick in and a car chase ensue. This time, however, it just seemed that bit perfunctory and by the motions, such that the pedestrians stepping out of the way of the onrushing vehicles at high speed are that bit more noticeable and less forgivable than their counterparts were a few years and films back.
On the plus side, the developing relationship between Berni and Scalia is interesting and works surprisingly well given one's image of Merli as an action rather than a dramatic lead, while the tension is rarely allowed to flag, helping cover over some narrative shortcomings - wouldn't a Brooklyn gang, even of none-too-smart and somewhat desperate junkie types, know that it was probably not wise to antagonise the two heavies who just happen to be the only customers in an Italian restaurant?
Trash film heaven, circa 1979
Lenzi fans will also enjoy playing spot the cameo appearance, even if the confinement of the likes of Gianfranco Cianfriglia to these roles is a touch sad. Trash cinema enthusiasts will likewise appreciate the images of pre-clean up New York, with a theatre marquee proudly proclaming porno features Fiona on Fire and Barbara Broadcast.
Meanwhile, Rome cop Lieutenant Berni (Maurizio Merli) is investigating one of the resulting hits and, suspecting a Sicilian connection, has arrived in Palermo.
The two men's paths intersect in the form of another mafioso, Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra).
All Berni has to do is bring Scalia to New York so that he can testify against Baressi, so that he can be extradited back to Italy.
All that stands between him and his goal are countless other mafioso and a long journey across unfamiliar territory, along with the quesion of whether Scalia won't try to escape, seek to extract his own justice upon Barresi, or simply refuse to testify...
Men with guns
Released in 1979, Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brooklyn / The Sicilian Boss was to prove the last of Umberto Lenzi's cop films and his final collaboration with the iconic Merli, essaying a character different from Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in name only.
While the film delivers most of what fans will expect, it's telling that a follow-up hinted at by the closing exchange, which would have charted the return journey from Brooklyn to Corleone, never materialised as Lenzi turned his attention to more horror-oriented fare.
Maurizio Merli
The Rome / Palermo / New York culture clash aspect is a good idea in principle, but tends to be negated, at least in the English dub, by the fact that everyone is speaking the same language. A discussion of the Sicilian dialect term cosche, referring to the tightly-wrapped leaves of the artichoke and representing an ironic ideal model for the relationship amongst members of a mafia family, is thus robbed of of much of its potential significance, for example.
The more familiar material - the obligatory chases, fights and shoot outs - is well enough handled as might be expected, but also tends to suffer from overfamiliarity if you've seen the any of the earlier films.
I could almost predict the moment when that driving Franco Micalizzi music - I don't know if I've actually heard it before, or if it just seemed that way - was going to kick in and a car chase ensue. This time, however, it just seemed that bit perfunctory and by the motions, such that the pedestrians stepping out of the way of the onrushing vehicles at high speed are that bit more noticeable and less forgivable than their counterparts were a few years and films back.
On the plus side, the developing relationship between Berni and Scalia is interesting and works surprisingly well given one's image of Merli as an action rather than a dramatic lead, while the tension is rarely allowed to flag, helping cover over some narrative shortcomings - wouldn't a Brooklyn gang, even of none-too-smart and somewhat desperate junkie types, know that it was probably not wise to antagonise the two heavies who just happen to be the only customers in an Italian restaurant?
Trash film heaven, circa 1979
Lenzi fans will also enjoy playing spot the cameo appearance, even if the confinement of the likes of Gianfranco Cianfriglia to these roles is a touch sad. Trash cinema enthusiasts will likewise appreciate the images of pre-clean up New York, with a theatre marquee proudly proclaming porno features Fiona on Fire and Barbara Broadcast.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
Italia a mano armata / A Special Cop in Action
This, the third and last in the Commissioner Betti series, following on from Marino Girolami's Roma violenta and Umberto Lenzi's Napoli violenta, sees Maurizio Merli's dedicated, no-nonsense lawman presented with gangs of armed robbers and kidnappers.
Let's go to work
Appearances can be deceptive....
While the former are quickly dealt with thanks to a tip-off from an informer, with Betti recognising a purported hostage as another member of the gang and calling their bluff – “Shoot him then! Go ahead and do it! Pull the trigger! Shoot him I said, and we'll get rid of another criminal!” – the latter proves a tougher nut to crack.
But Betti is not fooled forlong
Though Betti soon tracks the kidnappers down and rescues the children – excepting the obligatory sick one, whose death provides yet another reason for him to hate criminals, over and above his own father's death at the hands of a 16-year-old gunman many years before; this being about as all the characterisation we get or require – he doubts that they were operating on their own, suspecting that his slippery old enemy, Albertelli (John Saxon) is the brains behind the syndicate...
One of the kidnappers also tries for a spot of rape, allowing for some gratuitous, if unpleasant nudity that the married to the job nature of the Betti character would otherwise deny the film.
Though on one level the bank robber plot is superfluous, an extra action sequence or two in a film that doesn't really need it, the way in which Betti encourages one gangster to shoot the other / the hostage is a crucial demonstration of his absolute lack of doubt, as also evinced by encounters with Albertelli; his high-speed pursuit of a couple of the kidnappers in a commandeered car, or his confidence that the truth will out when, two-thirds of the way through, he is set up and sent to jail...
The pieta in Italian cinema, ancora
One can well imagine another film, actor, character and scenario in which this hold up incident proves pivotal, as a wrong decision leads to the death of an innocent man dies and a more introspective, questioning narrative in which there is the possibility that Albertelli is in fact innocent or where the politics of law and order in the politiziotto in general are actually presented as a matter for debate rather than largely taken for granted. (One here notes that the figure of the police informer, a necessary evil as far as advancing the narrative goes, never really seems to work in these films, precisely because it represents something of a challenge to their essentially manichean moral dualism, of good cops and bad criminals.)
Would you trust this man?
In this regard, it's worth noting that, if Merli transcended his initial positioning as poor man's Franco Nero, having gained his big break on account of being something of a look-alike, he always remained a more limited performer in terms of his range. Try for instance to place Merli in Castellari's Street Law, as the ordinary citizen who feels compelled to turn vigilante and ultimately realises the problems with this attractive-seeming course of action: it's difficult, perhaps even impossible.
As ever, however, such issues matter little when all involved deliver the goods, Merli's belief in his character is self-evident, the implications either a touch frightening or heartening, depending on whether you agree with the character and the film's implicit right-wing politics; Saxon suitably sleazy even as he likely just went through the motions to collect the paycheque; and director Franco Martinelli serving up plenty of car and other chases, shoot outs, stunts, fights and beatings, all accompanied by a propulsive Franco Micalizzi score, to give the film's target audience almost exactly what they wanted.
[spoiler follows]
... and Action!!
I say almost because of that ending, in which Betti is unceremoniously gunned down as he approaches his potential new love interest, Luisa (Mirella D'Angelo), the sister of the dead kidnapped child from earlier.
On the one hand, it's the logical apotheosis of a mythic character; one who fundamentally could not be permitted to change into a real-world figure. On the other, it put paid to the prospect of further entries in the franchise and, through this, perhaps tolled the first peals of the death knell for Merli's own career and the filone with which his fame and fortune were so closely intertwined.
Let's go to work
Appearances can be deceptive....
While the former are quickly dealt with thanks to a tip-off from an informer, with Betti recognising a purported hostage as another member of the gang and calling their bluff – “Shoot him then! Go ahead and do it! Pull the trigger! Shoot him I said, and we'll get rid of another criminal!” – the latter proves a tougher nut to crack.
But Betti is not fooled forlong
Though Betti soon tracks the kidnappers down and rescues the children – excepting the obligatory sick one, whose death provides yet another reason for him to hate criminals, over and above his own father's death at the hands of a 16-year-old gunman many years before; this being about as all the characterisation we get or require – he doubts that they were operating on their own, suspecting that his slippery old enemy, Albertelli (John Saxon) is the brains behind the syndicate...
One of the kidnappers also tries for a spot of rape, allowing for some gratuitous, if unpleasant nudity that the married to the job nature of the Betti character would otherwise deny the film.
Though on one level the bank robber plot is superfluous, an extra action sequence or two in a film that doesn't really need it, the way in which Betti encourages one gangster to shoot the other / the hostage is a crucial demonstration of his absolute lack of doubt, as also evinced by encounters with Albertelli; his high-speed pursuit of a couple of the kidnappers in a commandeered car, or his confidence that the truth will out when, two-thirds of the way through, he is set up and sent to jail...
The pieta in Italian cinema, ancora
One can well imagine another film, actor, character and scenario in which this hold up incident proves pivotal, as a wrong decision leads to the death of an innocent man dies and a more introspective, questioning narrative in which there is the possibility that Albertelli is in fact innocent or where the politics of law and order in the politiziotto in general are actually presented as a matter for debate rather than largely taken for granted. (One here notes that the figure of the police informer, a necessary evil as far as advancing the narrative goes, never really seems to work in these films, precisely because it represents something of a challenge to their essentially manichean moral dualism, of good cops and bad criminals.)
Would you trust this man?
In this regard, it's worth noting that, if Merli transcended his initial positioning as poor man's Franco Nero, having gained his big break on account of being something of a look-alike, he always remained a more limited performer in terms of his range. Try for instance to place Merli in Castellari's Street Law, as the ordinary citizen who feels compelled to turn vigilante and ultimately realises the problems with this attractive-seeming course of action: it's difficult, perhaps even impossible.
As ever, however, such issues matter little when all involved deliver the goods, Merli's belief in his character is self-evident, the implications either a touch frightening or heartening, depending on whether you agree with the character and the film's implicit right-wing politics; Saxon suitably sleazy even as he likely just went through the motions to collect the paycheque; and director Franco Martinelli serving up plenty of car and other chases, shoot outs, stunts, fights and beatings, all accompanied by a propulsive Franco Micalizzi score, to give the film's target audience almost exactly what they wanted.
[spoiler follows]
... and Action!!
I say almost because of that ending, in which Betti is unceremoniously gunned down as he approaches his potential new love interest, Luisa (Mirella D'Angelo), the sister of the dead kidnapped child from earlier.
On the one hand, it's the logical apotheosis of a mythic character; one who fundamentally could not be permitted to change into a real-world figure. On the other, it put paid to the prospect of further entries in the franchise and, through this, perhaps tolled the first peals of the death knell for Merli's own career and the filone with which his fame and fortune were so closely intertwined.
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