Execution Squad

Rome, the early seventies. Crime is up, the courts do not work, and a man arrested is out again the next day. Inspector Bertone is trying to do his job inside that arrangement. Then criminals start turning up dead one by one; the killings are clean, planned, and aimed at names the police already know. What Bertone works out is that whoever is doing this is on the inside. Some of his colleagues think it is right, and quietly back it. Bertone opposes it and ends up alone on his own side. Steno directs the Italian film; ninety-eight minutes, with Enrico Maria Salerno as Bertone and Mariangela Melato and Mario Adorf in the cast. Italy made dozens of police films like this in the seventies. Where this one differs: it shows the policeman who takes the law into his own hands as a danger, not a hero.