Rome, Armed to the Teeth

In Rome, a police inspector who ignores the rules goes after a hunchbacked killer with a machine gun. His methods have long since passed what the law allows, and the film chooses to have the audience endorse that rather than question it. Umberto Lenzi's film belongs to the poliziottesco cycle that rose in 1970s Italy. These films fed on the era's real fear of crime and distrust of the state, and their plots mostly turned on the hard cop being proved right. Maurizio Merli plays exactly that cop. Tomas Milian, as the hunchbacked killer, is the most memorable thing in it, staying genuinely unsettling even as the role edges toward caricature. Arthur Kennedy is in the cast. Who it's for: Viewers who like 1970s Italian genre cinema, hard-edged crime films and street chases. Who it's not for: The violence is heavy and the politics are openly authoritarian, offering the suspension of law as the solution. That stance is uncomfortable from here.