User Reviews

"Roma a mano armata" aka "Assault with a Deadly Weapon" might have been done for two reasons : 1. Pure shock value, the producers hoping to bring in more cash.

and / or 2. Propaganda in favour of giving law enforcement "carte blanche" to use and abuse brute force.

*** Tanzi, the main cop - described as a magnet attracting trouble midway during the movie -, just has to be somewhere for crime to happen.

Exchanging his "you bore me" look for his grinding teeth "I joined the force to catch criminals" face, he jumps into action to punch and kick his new found enemies.

Wait a minute... did he really say that he "joined the force to catch criminals"? That is exactly the film's problem : police officers are not working to ensure social peace, but to catch criminals.

The script even uses Tanzi's wife - whom he does not really seem to care for - to (in a very poorly done manner) attack social practises giving small criminals a chance to repent and become honest law-abiding citizens.

Wave after wave, evil-doers cross Tanzi's path, "proving" the cop's approach that only violence can resolve violence. Thus, the movie spirals downwards into ceaseless gunfire, knifing, raping, stealing, shooting a machine gun in a crowd for no reason at all and etcetera.

Did I say that there is no real story, apart from a few of the criminals Tanzi has hard time to catch throughout the movie? Yes, police force is necessary. But a movie which tries to implant the idea that it needs to become more violent is pure propaganda. Given proper care, most people are peaceful.

We need more Gandhi, and less Tanzi.

This classic entry in the Italian crime thriller (or "polizia") genre is highlighted by the unforgettable pairing of director Umberto Lenzi and star Maurizio Merli, who combine to make this one of the very best Italo crime films you'll see. This is a perfectly-made movie, well-shot at all times and incredibly fast paced. In the first twenty minutes you'll see enough action to make three low budget made-for-TV thrillers and the pacing doesn't let up until the very end. Shoot-outs, hold-ups, fist fights and car chases, they're all here and done in splendid style by a director who was at the very peak of his career before his star began to wane in the '80s. Anyone put off by plot complexities can relax because this, like many other Lenzi/Merli collaborations, is a relatively plotless movie that just features lots of random crimes, plot-threads and sub-plots linked together by Merli's ever angry Inspector Tanzi.

Whilst the name of Maurizio Merli's character may change with each film he's in, you can rest easy knowing he'll play the same angry, on-the-edge, anti-criminal policeman each time whose hard-edged tactics cause him to inevitably fall out with his superiors. Merli is at his best here, perfectly believable as the dedicated, no-nonsense lawman, a character you can really cheer for. Once again Lenzi assembles a cast of familiar Italian faces like Stefano Patrizi, Luciano Catenacci and Luciano Pigozzi to play the various scum who are terrorising the streets of Rome. Plus there's Ivan Rassimov (THE RED BERETS) playing a really evil creep who keeps his pretty, unfortunate girlfriend hooked on heroin and Arthur Kennedy (KILLER COP) reprising his "angry man" routine as Merli's increasingly frustrated chief. Hats off to Giampiero Albertini as a sympathetic fellow cop, Caputo, and in particular Tomas Milian (FREE HAND FOR A TOUGH COP) who excels as the slimy villain, an unbelievable hunchback character who runs amok.

This politically incorrect film definitely isn't for all tastes, especially with a near-the-knuckle rape sequence which pushes the boundaries of bad taste and is deeply unpleasant stuff to watch. Thankfully the rest of the violence is well-deserved and thus enjoyable, as we watch Merli beat up endless bad guys, smashing heads on pool tables, through pinball machines and roughing up countless bad guys. The action sequences are highlighted by a superb catchy and jazzy score (which kept me humming for days) and noisy engine revving and gunfire. The car chases are excitingly portrayed, especially a great scene involving an ambulance speeding through the city. I can't sing this movie's praises highly enough and recommend all Euro fans to track it down now, as it really is priceless stuff.

Poliziotteschi is but one of the many waves of Italian exploitation and one that takes American inspiration - Dirty Harry, The Godfather, Death Wish - and uses it to explore the Years of Lead, a time of social unrest, political upheaval, political and terrorism, rising crime and outfight mob warfare from the 1960s to 1980s. Much like the vigilante films that followed in the path of Paul Kersey, many of these movies exploit conservative fears of crime and protests.

Umberto Lenzi is a maniac, as we all know and potentially adore. From his Eurospy (008: Operation Exterminate, Kriminal, Super Seven Calling Cairo, The Spy Who Loved Flowers) and giallo films (I recommend anything he did with Carroll Baker, such as Orgasmo, Knife of Ice, So Sweet...So Perverse, A Quiet Place to Kill and Spasmo as well as non-Baker giallo such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and Oasis of Fear) to inventing the cannibal film with The Man from Deep River and expanding on it with Eaten Alive! And Cannibal Ferox, as well as wild later films like Ghosthouse, Nightmare City, Hitcher in the Dark and Nightmare Beach, I'm a big fan. I even love his TV movies House of Lost Souls and House of Witchcraft.

As with most Italian exploitation filmmakers - as you can tell - Lenzi jumped genre often. He also made a ton of poliziotteschi like Gang War In Milan, Almost Human, Manhunt In the City, Syndicate Sadists, Free Hand for a Tough Cop, Violent Naples, Brothers Until We Die, From Corleone to Brooklyn and The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist.

What sets his take on the form apart is apparent in a review from Variety that says that this film contains "...little idealism and much violence for the sake of violence."

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Lenzi had been sent a spy script for Roma ha un segreto (Rome Has a Secret) that he felt was boring and made no sense. He wanted a movie that was about the violence that Rome was living through and wrote the script for this movie - Roma a mano armata (Rome at Gunpoint) - in a week.

Inspector Leonardo Tanzi (Maurizio Merli) looks exhausted. And if you were him, you would be as well. He's dealing with gangsters operating in his beloved Rome and he's just one man against an onslaught of criminal activity that doesn't operate under the same rules that he's forced to obey.

His latest case has him tracking a French criminal and even when he arrests one of his henchmen, the one-armed Savelli, he's forced to release him without charge. Hours later, he kills a guard during a daring bank robbery. To track him down, they try to question his hunchbacked Savelli's hunchbacked brother-in-law Vincenzo Moretto (Tomas Millian, who pretty much runs away with this movie), a slaughterhouse worker who refuses to even speak to the cops, even after they plant drugs on him. He's smarter than them, as he uses his watch to slice his own wrists and promises to tell the newspapers that the police did it. Fearing a scandal, he's released and Tanzi gets demoted by Vice-Commissioner Ruini (Arthur Kennedy, who after The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue I always see as a gruff and overbearing bad cop) to a desk job writing licenses and permits.

Three of the hunchbacked maniac's associates kidnap Tanzi's girlfriend Anna (Maria Rosaria Omaggio) and threaten her in a junkyard, showing her how they plan on crushing her in the wreckage of a junked car. She's so traumatized that she can't even recognize them; Tanzi replies by tracking down Moretto and making him swallow a bullet. By attacking his manhood in that way, now Moretto plans to kill the cop one on one by using the very bullet Tanzi made him eat.

Any time Tanzi thinks he's getting ahead of the case and getting close to finding French gangster Ferrender or Savelli, Moretto is there to kill witnesses like heroin dealer Tony Parenzo (Ivan Rassimov). He also stages a bank robbery, which Tanzi interrupts by emerging from the air conditioning ducts a decade or so before Die Hard and wipes out most of the Hunchback's gang, leading to the criminal stealing an ambulance and killing numerous innocent bystanders.

The game between Tanzi and Moretto only increases in ferocity until by the end of the film, there's no alive in dead or alive.

When Aquarius Releasing distributed this film in the U. S., they changed the title to Brutal Justice and replaced establishing shots with American locations in an attempt to make it seem more like a domestic film, which only makes the resulting remix an example of surrealism. They also recut the movie for video release as Assault with a Deadly Weapon, creating a new title sequence with a skull-faced police officer and adding credits for cast and crew members who do not appear and did not make this film.

This movie was a huge deal in Italy, as the character of Tanzi would return in The Cynic, The Rat and the Fist and also appear in nine more films in this genre. And despite the way this movie ends, Millian would play Moretto again in Lenzi's Brothers Till We Die, a film that has him play a dual role and also bring back his character of Sergio Marazzi from Free Hand for a Tough Cop. This movie is like the Italian crime cinematic universe, as we learn that Moretto and Marazzi are twin brothers. Millian would go on to play Marazzi in Stelvio Massi's Destruction Force, Bruno Corbucci's Uno contro l'altro, praticamente amici and Francesco Massaro's Il lupo e l'agnello. By those last two movies, the character had moved past its crime origins and began to be the protagonist of more comedic films.

Basically it is just Leo Tanzi bringing bad guys to justice. As a '94 born man, I would say this is a kind of video game story which is set in the nineteen seventies. A tough, yet crooked, cop, Leo Tanzi, which is also a fearless man of the law, goes after the bad guys. Some of the bandits are meticulous, whereas others are just insane. A one hour and a half movie which does not let the action stop at any time. Car chase, shootings, fistfights, rapes and violence against woman in general... Also, blood and a few guts... And of course, some nudity. The italian movie industry never let us down, specially Umberto Lenzi.