SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

JohnHowardReid A Dania Film/C.C. Champion Production. Italian release: 27 August 1973. French DVD title: Rue de la Violence. 104 minutes.COMMENT: I have mixed feelings about this one. I purchased the NEO DVD (which I can most highly recommend, even though they can't spell "giustizia") solely because Richard Conte was billed above the title (Luc Merenda was billed first and then Conte – and that was it for above-the-title billing). Well, Conte is one of my favorite actors and I'd never seen any of his Italian films, so naturally I was quick to pounce on this DVD. As most of you know, Conte is an Italian name and Richard could speak Italian. And doubtless he did so during the shooting. But nonetheless, his voice is dubbed. Disappointment number one.The NEO DVD offers a choice between the original 98-minutes (allowing for DVD speed) Italian version (with French sub-titles) and a censored (to 95 minutes), French-dubbed version. Naturally, I chose the Italian version. The print is impeccable, but in a sense it's too good. The print is so sharp, it's easy to spot that Conte is not doing his own fighting. On the other hand, the other action scenes – and most particularly the car chases – are out of this world. Nonetheless, the sleazy, depressingly dark and bloodthirsty tone of the whole movie made me wish I'd watched the French version instead.

Coventry There are good cops, there are bad cops… and then there also are awesomely barbaric Italian cops! Back in the early 70's, when the best scoring films in Hollywood were raw & violent crime-thrillers like "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection", the Italian film industry immediately attempted to cash in on this trend and produced films that easily surpass the excitement-level of their American counterparts. The already hard-working local directors, who almost exclusively made horror films and westerns until then, like Umberto Lenzi, Fernando Di Leo and Enzo G. Castellari, suddenly also became specialists in the fields of outrageous car chases, deafening gunfights and aggressive personal vendetta techniques. Even though usually filmed on a tight schedule and wasting a minimum amount of budget, these crime-thrillers always are highly professional and technically superior films with impressively fast-paced camera-work and flawless editing. Sergio Martino joined the temporary hype as well, and – as it was the case with his splendid gialli-achievements – he delivered one of the absolute greatest efforts in the sub genre. His "Violent Professionals" has it all! The script is great and terrifically convoluted (courtesy of Ernesto Gastaldi – him again), the lead hero is immensely charismatic and merciless and the action sequences are so incredibly outrageous they're guaranteed to make your head spin. Practically all of these Italian crime-thrillers introduce heroic coppers who literally balance on the edge between right and wrong themselves. They're supposed to uphold the law and arrest criminals, but they rather act as judge, jury and executioner in one and prefer to kill a gangster rather than to bring him in for questioning. The opening sequence of "Violent Professionals" makes this perfectly clear, as the handsome and rough Inspector Giorgio Caneparo pursues a couple convicts through the Italian countryside after they escaped from a prison transport and killed several policemen and innocent civilians. Even after the criminals had already surrendered themselves, Inspector Giorgio guns them down anyway! This sequence is rather irrelevant to the rest of the movie's plot, but it's a terrific appetizer nevertheless and it gives you a good idea of the main character's personality. The actual plot revolves on the same Inspector Giorgio infiltrating in the organized crime network of Milan, because he wants to find and personally punish the bastard who killed the Milan police commissioner (and his own best friend). With his aggressive fighting style and vast knowledge of bank robbing techniques, Giorgio quickly gets himself noticed and he's soon hired as the getaway driver of one of Milan's most notorious mob bosses. The script isn't always waterproof, but the basic premise of "Violent Professionals" is compelling and engaging enough to keep you close to the screen throughout the whole playtime. The action is top-notch, with some of best car crashes/chases ever shown (the same ones actually feature in Lenzi's "Almost Human") and a whole lot of bloody executions. It's also an amazingly raw and relentless film! Poor, defenseless children and innocent hostages die just as brutally as the real baddies and you shouldn't count on a happy ending in which the hero walks towards the sunset with his loving girlfriend. Quite the contrary, Sergio Martino often captures a surprisingly gripping & melodramatic atmosphere here; especially in the sub plot centering on the affair with Inspector Giorgio and the drug addict informant Maria Ex. The De Angelis Brothers' score is one of the most enchanting ones I ever heard and it's perfectly appropriate for all the uneven differences in the film's tones. Luc Merenda is just as imposing and memorable as his fellow bad-cop actor colleagues Tomas Milian, Ray Lovelock and Maurizio Merli. Very much recommended if you're looking for thrills and suspense.

Camera Obscura THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS (Sergio Martino - Italy 1973).Not all too interesting Dirty Harry variation from Sergio Martino in this crime thriller, starring Luc Merenda as a tough smooth-guy cop who goes undercover as a wheels man to infiltrate a ring of cop-killin' bank robbers. The main problem is main man Luc Merenda who has little charisma and is either permanently smiling or desperately trying to look tough. Either way, his repertoire is a bit limited. The unimaginative screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi is entirely short on logic. This is less urgent when writing horror or giallos, but the actions of police and crime bosses are supposed to contain some kind of logic, since they're driven by greed and money. In the world of organized crime, there's usually little room for vague motives, but here, most actions lack any kind of motivation. Even a bank robbery is carried out so incredibly clumsy, it was beyond me why the bank robbers were even surprised things went wrong. Occasionally, it's a pretty lively affair with lots of action with some spectacular car chases (one of them probably took half the budget of the entire film), but some of these exciting set pieces can't save this from being a bore most of the time, with Merenda driving around in his car aimlessly or beating the living crap out of everyone he meets to get some answers about his chief's killing. In most cases, the answers don't add up to much or didn't make any sense to me. The English dubbing wasn't a big help in that department either.Camera Obscura --- 5/10

Blaise_B So far I've seen five of these 70's Italian crime thrillers, 3 of them being straight up, Don Siegel and William Friedkin-influenced "cop on the edge with an axe to grind" Dirty Harry rip-offs. Out of those three, all of which are great, this has got to be the one with the coolest story-line (the other two being "High Crime" and "Violent Naples," to give you an idea of the standard here). While it is neither perfect nor entirely realistic, it is action-packed, bloody and riveting, a cocktail of elements common to the genre. And this particular "cop-on-the-edge," played by Luc Merenda, is so on-the-edge that he "poses" as a pimp muscling in on prostitution rackets with the facility of an old pro, gets innocent bystanders killed without hardly batting an eye, and cold-bloodedly executes surrendering criminals in front of the entire police department!While he lacks quite the level of charisma and intensity delivered by Franco Nero or Maurizio Merli, Merenda holds his own. The primary reason he is able to do so here (the two secondary are Sergio Martino's competence in directing pulse-pounding action and the fact that the extremity I've come to expect from these films is as present here as anywhere) is the sucker-punch, no, make that downright subversive plot-line. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that what appears to be shaping up into a slanted portrayal of fanatical domestic terrorists (not that groups like the Red Brigade need any slanting to look bad, just that dishonesty bugs me even if it's on the right side) proves later to be something entirely different. The ending of this film, while it would be typical in another context, blew me away.To top it off, you've got a killer score by the mad De Angelis brothers (if you've seen "Keoma," note that it helps that the only song with words isn't translated into English), and the only fatal car crash I've ever seen in an action movie where the car doesn't inexplicably burst into flames. Three cheers for this gleefully brutal mayhem-fest with the added plus of an intelligent plot!