Violent Rome

A police inspector in Rome has had enough of the crime and violence in his city and is permanently at odds with his superiors. After a questionable shooting he is thrown off the force. Not long afterwards someone comes to his door with an offer on behalf of a group of citizens who are equally fed up with criminals going unpunished. Marino Girolami's film is about as typical as the Italian crime wave of the seventies gets, and it turned Maurizio Merli into the face of the genre. The anger in it fed off the actual crime figures of the period. What the film argues for is also perfectly clear: justice outside the law. That position was argued about in Italy when it came out and it stands in exactly the same place now.