User Reviews

Ultra serious, moody police investigation film with a kind of giallo feel throughout the first half.

Umberto Orisini plays a journalist who hands over a wad of cash to a strange fellow in exchange for a ring, goes to a bar and leaves with a mysterious lady, then gets jumped by a bunch of guys and shot in the head. To clear up this mess, the police assign hot-headed cop Frederick Stafford to find the killer.

Stafford is a divorcee with a daughter he hardly sees because he's a cop. He also very loose with his fists so when he gets an anonymous phone call that points to the killer, he sets about extracting a confession the old way. The guy does confess, but it all seems a bit too easy for Stafford...

The plot, which of course involves Stafford digging deeper into things and not liking what he finds one iota, is generic. On the other hand, the way director Bazzoni makes things unfold is fascinating. We, like Stafford, aren't privy to what's going on as he finds more people involved and someone else starts bumping people off. There's a girl at a local bar who takes an interest in Stafford and keeps obliquely referring to her employers, and there's a few 'warnings' thrown Stafford's way, the best of which is when he's kidnapped, blindfolded and taken to a quarry, seemingly to be executed.

For those looking for action there's not much until the end, but the journey is what makes this one worthwhile.

On one night, a journalist named Enrico Galiardin was attacked and killed by not a few people. And then, Inspector Luca Micheli begins to investigate, and somehow finds a suspect named Delogo. But, though the suspect himself confesses that he murdered Galiardin, Micheli doesn't and can't believe he did by himself. So he keeps investigating under the troublesome circumstances that both some crime organisation and the police itself force him closing the case with the only one suspect... Some apparently informative literatures seem to innocently presuppose this Italian film is a Giallo (and, strangely enough, their treatments seem to be all too brief), I don't and can't think so. On the contrary, I think this is nothing but a political drama with an unusually serious police officer, which excludes so-called Giallish elements. And, though this film betrays me exclusively because it is not a Gallio at all, I believe this is a simply great film. Concretely, the strength of this film lies mainly in two and independent powerfulness; its passionately and almost fanatically serious leading character, Inspector Luca Micheli, whom Frederick Stafford superbly plays, (indeed, this male character is too serious to be realistic and therefore has not only unacceptably official but also tragically marital/familial dysfunctions, and at the same time he is so powerful that does not perform a series of actions one after another but at one stoke brings about a series of events one after another), and Riz Ortolani's highly impressive music (his music is, of course, not event(s) and therefore do not straightforwardly enter into the casual relations, but is so powerful that can bring about event(s).) And furthermore, the director, Camillo Bazzaoni, has trustworthy talent for making each scene impressive. Especially, I am unexpectedly and almost astonishedly impressed by the aesthetic violentness of the last scene, which is adequately heightened and enriched by Ortolani's music. And here, as one of the Giallo-lovers, I want to add that the aesthetics of the last scene of this film has some interesting similarity to that of Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET. In conclusion, I can say this film is a great one which is recommendable to the general Italian-film-lovers rather than to the Giallo-lovers.