The Violent Professionals

Dismissed for ignoring the rules, Inspector Giorgio Caneparo goes undercover inside a criminal organisation in Milan. For months he lives as one of the gang and becomes part of a world in which violence is ordinary. The film is not interested in solving the crime. It is interested in a policeman losing the difference between his method and the criminals: to do the job he has to behave exactly like the men he is hunting, and the film is not troubled by this, it simply shows it. The form belongs to the Italian crime wave of the seventies, the poliziottesco: fast car chases, shootouts filmed in real streets, and short, hard bursts of violence. Sergio Martino directed. He is known for giallo, and this is that genre knowledge carried into crime. Luc Merenda plays the inspector and Richard Conte the man at the head of the organisation. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian crime cinema and seventies genre films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for political nuance. The film ends up defending violence as the answer to a broken order and never argues the point.