The Violent Professionals

Maverick cop Giorgio Caneparo (Luc Merenda) is suspended from duty after gunning down two escaped cop killers in cold blood. His superior sympathises somewhat, but also argues that the law should be upheld, for good or bad.

Then said boss, who had earlier hinted that his investigations had uncovered something big, is assassinated. When the official investigation leads nowhere – a montage of newspaper pages indicates that three anarchists were arrested, but released for lack of evidence – Canepara decides it's time to go back to work.

Working without official sanction or restraints, he soon infiltrates the city's underworld in the guise of a professional criminal and discovers a conspiracy that reaches to the very top of society. Someone is using the leftists and anarchists as cats paws to utterly discredit the establishment and create conditions ripe for right wing elements to step into the breach…

The Violent Professionals (AKA Milano trema – la polizia vuole giustizia) might best be summarised as Magnum Force alla Italia, taking as it does the idea of an unorthodox cop, sick of liberal weakness in the face of crime, finding his loyalties tested when a fascist faction decides to take the law into their own hands.

Although Ernesto Gastaldi's script doesn't quite convince in its political analysis, with Canepara's decision which way to go being fudged by the traditional appeal to personal loyalties, he does manage to create a credible atmosphere of social disintegration in which cycnicm and criminality are everywhere. Then again, cynicism is key to the whole 70s poliziotteschi cycle, a product of the fascist era with its myth of social order followed by the endemic instability and corruption of the postwar era combining, one suspects, to produce a schizoid attraction for and suspicion of authority coupled with a feeling that nothing works. Okay, it's not The Mass Psychology of Fascism, but you get the idea…

Director Sergio Martino, always a safe pair of hands when it comes to action (cf. Torso, Mannaja: A Man Called Blade, All the Colours of the Dark) plays to his strengths, emphasising deed over word from the get go with a succession of well-mounted shoot outs, fist fights and car chases.

While Luc Merenda is perhaps too much the pretty boy to really work as a Dirty Harry type compared to, say, the iconic Maurizio "the moustache" Merli, the Frenchman's charm and presence – not to mention a good deal of macho antics – are sufficient to carry him through.

Regular Martino collaborators Guido and Maurizio De Angelis contribute their usual patent mix of urban funk and folk styled themes, with the requisite flute and acoustic guitar action.

Wild East's Region 0 NTSC DVD of The Violent Professionals presents the film in its OAR of 2.35:1 and with Dolby Digital mono sound. Lines and other damage are visible from time to time on the print, especially when reels change, but it's a decent enough transfer overall for a 30 year old obscurity. The same could be said for the sound, on which I found the dialogue to be a bit flat and muffled.

The extras comprise an amusingly bad trailer and a picture gallery. Better than nothing, but not by very much.

This is a disc that will appeal to the Euro crime fans out there but few others. Nonetheless, as one of the former group, Wild East are to be thanked for making the disc available.