Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Bezenby A crippled guy in a wheelchair getting beaten by two jerks. Three schoolchildren gunned down in front of some nuns. Massimo Vanni hoofing Luciano Rossi in the nuts over and over again. Welcome to Violent Rome, where the moustaches are thick, the cars as brittle as poppadoms, and the general public certainly doomed.Rome in 1975 is a filthy hovel full of bagsnatchers, conmen, bank robbers, hustlers, pickpockets, rapists, psychopaths, murderers and bawbags running riot while cop Maurizio watches in horror, almost helpless as there's only so many criminals one man can either shoot or punch in the jaw. He does have some help, however, in the form of undercover cop Ray Lovelock. And some guy who dresses up as an old lady to catch bagsnatchers, but don't get hung up on that as it has nothing to do with the rest of the film. When Maurizio pops a cap in a particularly violent criminals ass, he ends up quitting his job as a violent policeman and starts working as a violent vigilante instead, which makes him even more violent and rage-filled. In fact, this film has so much violence, car chases, and member of the public killing that it leaves almost no time to have any kind of plot at all. Not that I was caring!Out of the cast of regulars who keep showing up in these sorts of films for the next decade, John Steiner stands out the most as an evil bank robber who'll shoot anyone in his way. He always makes a great bad guy, and he's backed up by rapist Luciano Rossi and violent vigilante Massimo Vanni too. Richard Conte is a good guy in this one, and sadly, this is also his last film, as he died of a heart attack in 1975. Completely lacking in style, good acting, or plausibility, Violent Rome makes an ideal addition to your collection as it's full of all the other stuff you want in a film called Violent Rome.

radiobirdma In autumn 1974, High Crime was a monster hit for the Italian movie industry, but neither superstar Franco Nero nor director Enzo G. Castellari were available for a follow-up cash-in. So the producer of Roma Violenta rang up Maurizio Merli, who had already impersonated Nero in the Jack London rip-off White Fang to the Rescue, and teamed him up with Castellari's papa (!) Marino Girolami. The first part of the Commissario Betti trilogy, a fierce and ferocious vigilante opera, has the rawest, most unleashed feel of the remorseless triptych – followed by the bigger budgeted, slicker and more generic Napoli Violenta and the utterly bleak Italia a Mano Armata – and delivers all the nasty way to hell, culminating quite early in a high class car chase involving an Alfa Romeo Giulia Super 1600 and a BMW 1800. Despite the loose, vignette-esque script by Vincenzo Mannino, Roma Violenta is spot-on throughout, with Merli – who actually considered himself superior to Nero – doing his Italian job with a somber, easy-to-underestimate bravura that serves as the single anchor in the widening gyre of the inferno. Sure, that's crypto-fascist dirt, a shame for a country that got rid of the Duce only three decades before, the most successful poliziottesco ever, and a tightly entertaining affair summarized best in the timeless words of N.Y. punk rockers Ed Gein's Car: "I've got five dollars for each of you/ And a bullet in the back/ Boo f*ckin' hoo."

chaos-rampant I think my fellow reviewers are overstating things a bit. Roma Violenta is by no means a bad movie, but it does nothing any number of poliziotteschi films can't do better and it doesn't impress with what it does either.Maurizio Merli plays another inspector, this time Commisarrio Betti. There's a healthy number of car chases, fistfights, gundowns and just about anything you would expect from a film of this kind, but it's all done with such a workmanlike air from Marino Girolami (Castellari's father) that I couldn't help but glance at my watch every now and then. Girolami does Roma Violenta with the get-it-over-with attitude of a professional instead of the enthusiasm of a fan. Get in, take the master shot, take the close-ups, get it over with cos there's a paycheck in the end. No imagination whatsoever. I can imagine him on set crossing things off a list: "Car chase? Check. Fistfight? Check".Polizioto fans that need their fix will be satisfied by Roma Violenta, but if you haven't seen true genre classics like The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist, Almost Human or La Mala Ordina, then Roma Violenta can wait.

gadflyzzz This is cheap and nasty film making at its best/worst. Sensational, kamikaziesque car chase sequences featuring Fiat 500s are the highlight of this marvelous time capsule from a raunchier, less precious era. Rome in the mid-70s looks grungy, edgy, poor and downbeat -- the perfect backdrop for this "Spaghetti Noir" homage to Eastwood's Inspector Callahan. The Foley-guy goes crazy during laughably excessive fight sequences, each blow delivered with an sickeningly unreal aural crunch. All manner of brutality is explored without shame or pity; no victim is too vulnerable - from aging female bystanders, to the wheelchair-bound. The acting is by turns wooden and hysterical, the extras either homicidal maniacs or their hapless victims. But the real highlights are the car chases, "exhilarating" doesn't do it justice. "Suicidal" comes close. Then again, having lived here for the past couple of years, it could be just another day in Roma traffic.