Rome Armed to the Teeth

Maurizio Merli punches Rome for a hundred minutes. A violent cop with a moustache and no patience for procedure goes after a sadistic hunchbacked gangster, and Umberto Lenzi shoots the whole thing at a sprint.

The politics are incoherent in the way the cycle specialised in: furious at criminals, contemptuous of the courts, nostalgic for a brutality the film both condemns and clearly enjoys. Tomas Milian is frightening as the villain.

Fast, ugly and representative. This is the poliziottesco at its most id-driven.