Liberi armati pericolosi (1976)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Romolo Guerrieri

Writers:

Fernando Di Leo (screenplay)
Fernando Di Leo (story)

Release Date:

1983 (USA)

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Criminal | Threesome | Female Nudity | Based On Novel

Cast

Eleonora Giorgi	...	Lea
Tomas Milian	...	Commissario
Stefano Patrizi	...	Mario Farra
Benjamin Lev	...	Giovanni Etrusco
Max Delys	...	Luigi Morandi
Venantino Venantini	...	Sign. Morandi
Salvatore Billa	...	Forger
Antonio Guidi
Diego Abatantuono	...	Lucio
Luciano Baraghini
Ruggero Diella	...	Supermarket Robber
Giorgio Locuratolo	...	Friend of Lucio
Valeria Gagliardi
Gloria Piedimonte	...	Friend of Lucio
Tom Felleghy	...	Prof. Farra

Also Known As:

Young, Violent, Dangerous (USA)
Young, Violent, and Desperate (USA) (video title)

Runtime:

USA:100 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Certification:

Iceland:16 | France:-16 | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Benjamin Lev hits Peter Berling in the back with a piece of lumber, it bends as though it is made out of rubber.

Interesting Italian crime thriller

This is an interesting movie. It is a tendency of Italian exploitation movies in general to eschew logical plotting and character development to focus on elaborate cinematic "set pieces". While this usually works with gialli (and some would say cannibal and zombie films)it is often problem in the Italian crime films where the set pieces usually involve shoot-outs and overlong car chases, two areas where the Italians had NO chance of outdoing bigger-budget Hollywood films (although they often did their damnedest). This film is interesting therefore because it DOES have a lot of character development especially among the villains, three privileged youths that become desperate criminals after their clean-cut but increasingly psychotic leader, "Blondie", starts a gun battle during a botched gas station robbery. One of the other youths is a more obviously deranged thrill seeker, while the third youth, the "wheel-man" is decidedly non-violent but loyal to a fault to his two friends.

Rounding out the cast is the girlfriend of the wheel-man (Eleanora Giorgi) who ironically sets the whole thing in motion by reporting the robbery plans to the police (and mistakenly telling them that the trio only have toy guns). The head cop meanwhile is played by Tomas Milan, usually the psychotic heavy in these type of films. Milan lends an iconic presence and is an interesting character in that he is not unsympathetic but is also not the usual borderline-fascist "rebel with a badge" often seen in these movies. Mostly he just proves tragically incompetent at stopping the rampaging youths.

The plot is mostly pretty believable except for a scene where they hook up with another group of youths and shoot-up and rob a grocery store, even killing their own accomplices for no good reason. There's some pretty gratuitous nudity including a pretty sorry excuse to get Giorgi topless (but who's gonna complain about that too much?). The ending is typically cynical, but that's one thing I admire about these films over the violence-glorifying Hollywood versions. See this if you like Italian crime thrillers--or even if you don't.