The Knock Out Cop

In Naples, commissioner Rizzo is after the drug traffic. The man is large, calm and carries no gun; he does the job with his fists. He knows the district and its people, gets on with his informers and pays little attention to procedure. As the investigation grows, obstruction begins to come from inside his own force too. Steno directs. Bud Spencer plays Rizzo. The film stands apart from the double act comedies Spencer made with Terence Hill; here he is alone and the genre is crime. Even so the fights are in the same manner: nobody is seriously hurt and the violence is kept comic. It sits inside the Italian crime wave without being one of that wave's bleak examples; next to the hard police films of the same years this one is open to a family audience. The character caught on and three more films followed; Rizzo became one of Spencer's best known parts. The streets and harbour of Naples stand in the film as a real place, and the narrative gives local life in detail. The script is simple and the criminal strand is predictable; what carries the film is Spencer himself. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies Italian popular cinema and Bud Spencer's films. Who it is not for: the crime plot is weak, the humour repeats, and it is light for a viewer expecting the hard police films of the period.